•mm 


ND  OPINIONS  OF 

?  FRANC'TS  H.  DOYLE 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


OP 


EEMINISCENOES 


AND    OPINIONS 


SIB  FBMCIS   HASTINGS  DOYLE 


1813—1885 


NEW   YORK: 
D.  APPLETON   AND    COMPANY, 

1887. 


ttf'l 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAOB 

My  reasons  for  writing  this  book — My  birth  in  1810 — Zimri, 
Duke  of  Buckingham — Lord  Fairfax — Story  of  Sir  William 
Harcourt  and  myself  as  horse-dealers — Earliest  recollections 
— Departure  from  home  to  Monsieur  Clement's  school  at 
Chelsea 1 

CHAPTER  II. 

Monsieur  Clement's  school — Distinguished  pupils  of  Monsieur 
Clement— French  teaching — Prenez  la  Marque — My  first  pun 
and  its  consequences — Mr.  Codrington's  rice  pudding — Mr. 
Locke  King's  meringues — The  air  pump — Professor  Daubeny 
at  Oxford — The  Thistlewood  Conspiracy 15 


CHAPTER 


ill. 


My  introduction  to  Eton — State  of  Eton  education  in  my  time — 
Elected  to  the  Debating  Society  before  Mr.  Gladstone — Mr. 
Gladstone's  maiden  speech — Milnes  Gaskell — Bruce,  afterwards 
Lord  Elgin — Arthur  Hallam — His  early  and  unexpected  death 
— Some  account  of  his  character — The  Eton  Miscellany — Sir 
>-,  John  Hanmer — Dr.  Keate — Keate  v.  Arnold — Eton  v.  Rugby 
— Commercial  crisis  of  1825 29 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Holidays  mainly  spent  in  Yorkshire — Introduction  as  a  boy  to 
Sydney  Smith — Unfailing  flow  of  his  wit — Its  general  character 
— His  quotations — A  pun  of  his — A  pun  of  mine — The  reason 
why  he  was  not  made  a  Bishop — My  first  Derby— Virtue  its 
own  reward — Lucky  escape  in  1827 — The  Doncaster  Cup  race 
— Other  note  worthy  boys  at  Eton  with  me — George  Lewis — My 

476375 

tiif jtisL  Dept 


vi  CONTENTS 


mission  into  Yorkshire  and  Northumberland — The  Solwyns — 
Frederick,  Tennyson — Wellesley,  afterwards  Dean  of  Windsor 
— Alexander  Leith — Monsieur  Hamon — How  he  earned  a  ring 
— Lord  Dalmeny's  black  eye — The  officers  of  the  Coldstream 
Guards  who  fell  at  Inkerman 66 

CHAPTER  V. 

Leaving  Eton — Go  to  a  private  tutor's — My  fellow-pupils — Meet 
one  of  them  afterwards  at  Rome — He  constitutes  himself  my 
guide — Works  of  art  at  Rome — The  Minerva  Medica — The 
Dying  Gladiator — The  Faun  of  Praxiteles — Sir  Charles  Napier 
— Augustus'  villa — The  confessionals  at  St.  Peter's.  .  .  83 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Pass  on  to  Christ  Church — New  Friends — Political  changes  of 
opinion  since  then — Whether  I  was  prevented  from  changing 
by  circumstances — How  far  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  influenced 
Mr.  Gladstone — My  tutor,  Mr.  Williams — Tiglath  Pileser  and 
Sardanapalus — Lord  Bolingbroke — The  '  Electra '  of  Sophocles 
Mr.  Jebb — Frederick  Rogers,  since  Lord  Blachford — Mr.  Old- 
ham  missing  the  Greek  Iambic  prize  at  Oriel — Mr.  Gladstone's 
abstinence  from  the  Debating  Society  at  Oriel.  .  .  .89 

CHAPTER  YII. 

Cardinal  Manning  as  a  member  of  the  Oxford  Debating  Society — 
His  great  influence  over  his  contemporaries — His  views  on  the 
subject  of  Barilla — His  fate  as  an  explainer  contrasted  with 
that  of  Adam — His  speech  on  the  question  whether  Shelley  or 
Byron  were  the  greater  poet — What  really  took  place  at  and 
after  that  debate — Mr.  Gladstone  takes  Manning's  place  as 
leader  of  the  Union — Mr.  Lowe's  first  appearance — Mr.  Glad- 
stone's Reform  speech  in  1866 — Shakespeare  a  member  of  the 
Stupid  party — Mr.  Gladstone's  Oxford  distinctions— How  we 
competed  unsuccessfully  with  a  schoolboy  for  the  Ireland 
Scholarship 105 

CHAPTER  VIH. 

at  holic  Emancipation — Albany  Fonblanque's  saying  about  it 
many  years  afterwards — The  Tory  Cassandras  right  in  their 
prophecies  as  to  Catholic  Emancipation,  Parliamentary  Reform 


CONTENTS  vii 


FAGB 

and  Free  Trade — Readings  away  from  Oxford  with  Mr.  Patch 
— His  extraordinary  acquirements — My  visit  to  Mr.  Gladstone 
in  Kincardineshire — Great  natural  powers  of  Mr.  John  Glad- 
stone, his  father — Pursuit  of  archery—  Dunnottar  Castle— Hope 
Scott — His  life  by  Mr.  Ornsby — Cardinal  Newman — Hope 
Scott's  bloodhound — Other  incidents  belonging  to  Natural 
History  observed  by  me .  127 

CHAPTER  IX. 

The  first  University  boat-race — Boat  Lloyd's  method  with  the 
Dons — My  adventure  with  a  Duchess — Winchester  cricketers 
— Lord  Byron  as  a  cricketer — Introduction  to  Wordsworth — 
Third  reading  of  the  first  Reform  Bill — Mr.  Gladstone  an  ad- 
vocate for  rotten  boroughs — Principal  speakers  in  the  House 
of  Commons — Lord  Stanley — Whittle  Harvey — Sir  Robert 
Peel  —  O'Connell  —  Sheil  —  Macaulay  —  Matthew  Arnold — 
Grattan's  failure  as  an  after-dinner  speaker  ....  159 

CHAPTER  X. 

Oastler,  the  demagogue — His  great  oratorical  powers — Triumphs 
over  Queen's  Counsel  at  York — Critical  examination  of  the 
famous  oath  in  the  Oration  on  the  Crown — London  amuse- 
ments— Lady  Davy  at  Stafford  House — My  first  tour — Old  Eng- 
lish racehorses — Proposed  alteration  in  the  conditions  of  a 
Queen's  plate  .  190 

CHAPTER  XI. 

All  Souls— A  word  in  defence  of  All  Souls  fellowships — Henry 
Ker  Seymer — Abolition  of  local  scholarships — Henry  Denison 
and  Mr.  Dry — The  way  in  which  the  prizes  are  now  decided — 
My  protest  against  it 203 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Marshal  to  BaronParke  in  1834-5— Eccentricities  of  his  namesake 
and  brother- judge,  James  Allan  Park — The  habit  ot  talking 
to  oneself — Story  of  the  Chinese  pedlar — Baron  Parke's  gene- 
rosity to  his  brothers  and  sisters — Lady  Parke,  afterwards 
Lady  Wensleydale — Epigrams  of  Baron  Parke — Sam  Rogers — 
Courvoisier's  Trial — Duty  of  an  advocate— Family  life  at  Ampt- 
hill— Figure  as  a  theological  instructor  .  .  .  .  210 


viil  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

FAQK 

Failure  to  learn  German — Goethe's  treatment  of  Madame  Von 
Stein — Called  to  the  Bar — Mr.  Peard — Sam  Warren— Roebuck 
— Cresswell — Alexander — Grand  Courts — Circuit  and  Quarter 
Sessions — Carlyle  at  Quarter  Sessions — David  Dundas — James 
Wortley — Pilgrimage  to  John  Scott's — Dr.  Johnson  and  race- 
horses— Charles  Greville  at  York  Races — Dundas  at  whist — 
Stirling  of  Keir — Murphy — Baron  Alderson  ....  229 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

Trials  of  interest  on  the  Northern  Circuit — Murder  of  Lord  Wen- 
lock's  keeper — Quarrel  between  two  brothers  at  Newcastle — 
Tom  Hodgson's  bewilderment — Shakespeare  at  Liverpool — 
'Much  Ado  about  Nothing' 260 

CHAPTER  XV. 

Appointed  Revising  Barrister — Justice  defied  at  Bradford — Litera- 
ture of  the  period — Carlyle — Tennyson — Browning — Best  man 
to  Mr.  Gladstone  at  his  marriage — My  own  marriage — Ap- 
pointed Receiver-General  of  Customs — Mr.  Grenville — High- 
waymen at  the  beginning  of  the  century — Mr.  Grenville's 
death 275 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

House  in  Portugal  Street — Defalcation  at  the  Custom  House — 
Death  of  Prince  Albert — Afghan  War — Repeal  of  Corn  laws 
— Pamphlet  on  Marriage  with  a  Deceased  Wife's  Sister  .  .  203 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

Henry  Cheney  and  his  brother  Edward — Italian  sermon  referred 
to — Impossible  to  report — Divorces  in  Poland — Tenth  of  April 
— Seditious  movements  in  Germany  and  elsewhere — Death  of 
Sir  Robert  Peel — International  Exhibition  of  1851 — Death  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington — Crimean  War — Indian  mutiny — Zulu 
War 307 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Napoleon's  attack  upon  Austria— Volunteer  movement — False 
economy — Reasons  why  the  Boers  revolted — State  of  the  Navy 
— Zulu  discipline — Curious  story  from  New  Guinea — Civil  war 


CONTENTS  ix 


in  America — Accident  to  General  Lee's  despatches — Lord 
Derby's  opportunity — Fenian  murder  of  a  policeman  in  Man- 
chester   325 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

Elected  Poetry  Professor  at  Oxford — My  lectures  afterwards  pub- 
lished— Mrs.  Siddons  the  younger — The  Moabite  inscription — 
*  The  Dream  of  Gerontius ' — My  ode  to  Lord  Salisbury — Mili- 
tant old  clergyman — Miss  Austen — Her  sad  adventure  in 
Switzerland 346 

CHAPTER  XX. 

Origin  of  the  Doyle  family — William  Doyle,  the  wit — My  great- 
uncle — Sir  John  Doyle — His  fine  qualities — Peroration  of  a 
speech  of  his— My  grandfather's  remarkable  power  over  his 
soldiers — The  quick  march  of  the  14th  Regiment — Poem  on 
the  subject — My  father — My  uncle,  Charles  Joseph— Stories 
of  the  Peninsular  War  .  358 

EPILOGUE. 

My  feelings  about  Home  Rule  and  other  political  questions — Dis- 
trust of  Mr.  Gladstone — Correspondence  with  him  in  1880 — 
Its  effect  upon  my  mind — The  death  of  Henry  Taylor — My 
view  of  his  character  and  talents — Weather  reminiscences — 
Story  from  Cavendish's  '  Life  of  Wolsey ' — Conclusion  .  .  403 


REMINISCENCES  AND  OPINIONS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

My  reasons  for  writing  this  Book — My  birth  in  1810 — Zimri,  Duke  of 
Buckingham — Lord  Fairfax — Story  of  Sir  William  Harcourt  and 
myself  as  horse-dealers — Earliest  recollections — Departure  from 
home  to  Monsieur  Clement's  school  at  Chelsea. 

WHEN  anyone,  as  I  am  now  doing,  approaches  the 
age  of  seventy-four,1  he  ought  to  be  able  to  tell 
his  juniors  something  worth  listening  to.  Indeed, 
I  rather  regret  that  I  did  not  begin  this  piece  of 
work  ten  years  ago;  my  first  recollections  would 
have  been  scarcely  less  valuable  then  than  now.  I 
should  have  escaped  interruptions  from  illness,  and, 
moreover,  have  been  able  to  write  what  had  to  be 
written — whether  from  a  personal  or  a  public  point 
of  view — with  greater  freedom  and  cheerfulness. 

Books  of  this  kind  have  little  claim  to  be  valued 

1  I  am  now  seventy-six,  but  I  cannot  keep  always  altering  the  text. 
This  book  was  written  some  years  ago,  and  then  put  away  till  acci- 
dentally called  for.  A  few  sentences  have  been  inserted,  and  a  few 
verbal  alterations  made,  in  order  to  adjust  it  more  or  less  to  the  present 
time ;  it  remains,  however,  in  the  main  what  it  was.  In  the  actual 
condition  of  public  affairs  I  found  it  impossible  to  be  silent.  I  have 
therefore  given  utterance  to  my  feelings  and  opinions  about  them  in  a 
few  pages  which  I  have  placed  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


2        CHOKER  AND  LORD  MALMESBURY— JOHNSON 

as  literature  in  any  high  sense  of  the  word ;  their 
principal  object,  indeed,  is  to  help  on,  more  or  less, 
future  historical  research.  Memoirs,  therefore,  like 
those  of  Mr.  Croker  and  Lord  Malmesbury,  based  as 
they  are  upon  national  events,  and  enriched  with 
important  letters  from  men  who  have  distinguished 
themselves  in  the  service  of  then*  country,  occupy 
one  position  ;  gossiping  volumes,  such  as  mine,  quite 
another.  Indeed,  what  I  am  about  to  give  to  the 
world  resembles  rather  a  spirit  distilled  from  the 
vin  ordinaire  of  a  life-talk,  and  bottled  for  future 
use,  than  a  literary  production.  Of  course,  when 
the  wine  is  not  vin  ordinaire,  but  Johnson  premiere 
qualit^,  or  the  like,  the  juice  expressed  from  it  is 
'  brandy  for  heroes/  and  defies  time.  But  much 
inferior  stuff  may  be  worth  something  for  special 
purposes  during  a  certain  number  of  years. 

It  has  always  been  my  belief  that  a  more  living 
knowledge  of  the  past  is  to  be  obtained  by  study- 
ing the  State  Trials  than  by  poring  over  formal 
narrations,  however  highly  esteemed — because  these 
trials  raise  up  before  us  clearer  pictures  of  the  men 
tried,  and  of  their  contemporaries,  than  any  writer 
belonging  to  a  different  age,  with  new  habits  of 
thought  and  speech  and  conduct,  can  afterwards 
create  out  of  books  and  parchments. 

So  is  it,  in  some  degree,  with  the  pictures  that 
stay  by  us  from  our  early  youth.  In  proportion  as 
they  are  pictures,  and  not  mere  records,  they  wear  a 
more  genuine  aspect ;  with  more  glow  and  colour 


MY  QUALIFICATIONS  FOR  WRITING  MEMOIRS       3 

than  we  find  in  '  Mr.  Wordy 's  History  of  the  late 
War/  in  spite  of  its  forty  volumes.  Indeed,  a  book 
like  mine,  composed  out  of  my  memory  alone — 
though,  no  doubt,  it  is  in  many  respects  inferior 
to  more  solid  biographies  —  possesses,  nevertheless, 
certain  compensations  of  its  own  ;  what  is  produced 
comes  back,  because  it  has  remained  in  my  mind 
by  its  own  strength,  not  merely  because  it  was  once 
noted  down  in  a  diary.  And  its  survival  is,  one 
may  say,  something  like  *  the  survival  of  the  fittest.' 
I  may  be  told  that  there  are  many  people,  higher  in 
standing  than  myself,  ready  and  eager  to  scatter 
their  recollections  far  and  wide ;  and  I  may  be  asked, 
what  necessity  there  is  for  me  to  trouble  mankind  in 
that  way  at  all.  It  is  true  that  my  career  has  not 
been  an  adventurous  one,  and  that  many  of  my  con- 
temporaries may,  must  indeed,  have  more  important 
communications  to  make.  Still,  in  the  first  place, 
several  eminent  persons  who  have  left  us,  and  several 
others  who  are  yet  alive,  have  done  me  the  honour 
to  accept  and  value  my  friendship  ;  secondly,  I  have 
been  sufficiently  knocked  about  in  the  world  to 
become  acquainted  with  men  of  different  characters 
and  conditions,  and  to  see  life  under  various  aspects  ; 
thirdly,  though  circumstances  have  shut  me  out  from 
taking  any  active  part  in  public  affairs,  and  forced 
me,  as  a  matter  of  official  decorum,  often  to  keep 
silence  when,  as  an  Englishman,  I  felt  it  painful  not 
to  speak  out,  I  have,  nevertheless,  passed  through 
important  periods  of  history,  and  taken  that  interest 


in  them  which  is  natural  to  one  who  has  enjoyed  the 
usual  advantages  of  education.  And,  lastly,  though 
I  put  forward  no  claim  to  those  wonderful  gifts  in 
that  department  of  the  mind  which  distinguished, 
among  others,  or  rather  before  others,  Macaulay 
and  the  late  Sir  Robert  Peel,  my  memory  has  always 
been  strong  and  vivid  :  hence  most  of  the  events 
which  from  time  to  tune  awakened  and  attracted  my 
attention  remain  quite  alive,  and  as  present  before 
what  Wordsworth  calls  '  the  inner  eye '  as  if  they 
had  happened  yesterday. 

And  now  that  I  have  thus  far  explained  the 
qualifications  I  suppose  myself  to  possess  for  the 
task  I  have  undertaken,  I  shall  waste  no  more  words 
but  start  at  once.1 

I  was  born  in  the  house  of  my  grandfather  (Sir 
William  Milner),  Nunappleton,  near  Tadcaster,  in 
Yorkshire,  rather  more  than  seventy- six  years  ago. 
Nunappleton  is  a  place  of  some  interest,  as  having 
belonged  to  the  Parliamentary  General,  Lord  Fairfax, 
and  afterwards  to  Zimri,  Duke  of  Buckingham,  his 
son-in-law.  The  Milner  of  that  day  had  been  a 
friend  and  adherent  of  the  Fairfaxes,  and  bought  the 
estate  (cheaply  enough,  if  I  do  not  misjudge  my 

1  After  having  exhausted  my  own  reminiscences,  I  have  added  a 
short  chapter  giving  an  account  of  my  family,  particularly  of  certain 
of  my  predecessors  in  it,  Whose  lives,  as  it  appears  to  me,  are  of  much 
greater  interest  and  higher  value  than  my  own  rather  colourless  exist- 
ence. I  can  only  hope  that  my  readers,  if  I  have  any,  will  not  think 
these  older  recollections  out  of  place. 


ZIMRI— ANDREW  MARVEL— LORD  FAIRFAX  5 

ancestor,  an  honest  man,  but  "with  an  eye  to  the  main 
chance)  of  Zimri's  executors  and  creditors,  shortly 
after  that  worthy  had  breathed  his  last  '  in  the  worst 
inn's  worst  room,'  according  to  Pope's  very  foolish 
couplet.  There  is  something  ridiculous  in  inferring 
a  man's  degradation  and  ruin,  because,  having 
broken  his  neck  out  hunting  he  is  carried,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  into  the  nearest  public-house  I 
There  is  a  poem  written  by  Andrew  Marvel  to  cele- 
brate Nunappleton,  whilst  yet  belonging  to  the  Fair- 
faxes. In  its  present  condition  it  does  not  deserve 
the  praise  he  lavishes  upon  it ;  the  park  is  a  dead 
flat,  with  a  heavy  clay  soil,  and  is  very  liable  to 
floods  and  fogs  ;  in  point  of  fact,  hi  spite  of  some 
fine  timber,  it  is  decidedly  an  ugly  place.  Lord  Fair- 
fax, besides  his  historical  renown,  is  interesting  to 
the  Yorkshireman  from  another  point  of  view  :  he 
figures  in  the  Stud  Book  as  the  earliest  Englishman 
(known  to  me,  at  any  rate)  who  possessed  an  Arab 
mare.  She  was  an  ancestress  of  Flying  Childers  and 
other  celebrated  racers.  Arab  horses  were  common 
enough  towards  the  end  of  the  17th  century,  but  the 
best  Eastern  mares  came  from  Barbary,1  not  from 
Arabia.  In  that  country,  indeed,  until  very  recently, 
they  were  guarded  with  a  jealous  care ;  so  that  Lord 

1  Tangier,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  when  our  actual  breed  of  race- 
horses began  to  develop  itself,  belonged  to  England,  a  circumstance 
always  overlooked  by  the  Houyhnhnm  writers,  to  whom  bipeds  are  of 
no  importance  whatsoever.  Shakspeare  by  Hobgoblin  is  their  Shak- 
speare,  not  the  mere  poet  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  who,  whatever  his 
other  merits  may  have  been,  had  only  two  legs. 


6  THE  EXACT  DATE  OF  MY  BIRTH 

Fairfax  could  only  have  obtained  this  one  by  some 
accident,  perhaps  because  she  had,  according  to  the 
native  superstition,  unlucky  marks  about  her. 

I  was  born  on  August  21  (not  the  22nd  as  the 
Baronetage  states),  1810,  and  I  made  my  first  ap- 
pearance in  the  world  whilst  the  York  races  were 
going  on.  I  need  scarcely  say  that  during  the 
months  of  August  and  September  the  air  of  York- 
shire is,  or  at  any  rate  was,  quite  full  of  the  racing 
element,  and  I  may  have  instinctively  drawn  in  my 
love  of  thoroughbred  horses  out  of  the  echoes  of 
the  shouting  that  rolled  southward  from  Knaves - 
mire,  as  I  presented  myself  to  the  universe.  An 
Eton  friend  of  mine,  the  present  Lord  Fitz-Wil- 
liam's  elder  brother,  whose  bright  and  promising 
career  was  ended,  alas,  too  soon  by  his  unlocked  for 
death,  once  somewhat  annoyed  a  young  lady,  no 
longer  quite  a  young  lady,  by  proclaiming  to  a  mixed 
company  that  she  had  been  born  in  Paulina's  year, 
thus  fixing  her  age,  without  any  appeal,  upon  the 
implacable  evidence  of  the  Racing  Calendar.  Not 
being  a  young  lady  I  may  safely  borrow  the  phrase, 
and  say  that  I  was  born  in  Octavian's  year,  or  rather, 
as  the  St.  Leger  did  not  decide  itself  till  after  August 
21,  let  me,  though  a  Yorkshireman,  fall  back  on  the 
Derby  and  claim  to  have  been  born  in  the  year  of 
the  great  Whalebone,  whose  name,  through  his  own 
exploits  and  those  of  his  progeny,  must  ever  remain 
one  of  the  immortal  and  evergreen  names  of  the  turf. 
To  the  same  village  of  Bolton  Percy,  the  village  near 


HORSE-DEALING  7 

Nunappleton,  another  gentleman,  much  more  impor- 
tant than  I  am,  also  belongs.  Mr.  William  Harcourt, 
Sir  "William  Harcourt's  father,  was  rector  of  the 
parish — it  is  one  of  the  very  best  livings  in  the 
Archbishop  of  York's  gift — and  if  you  compare 
the  surnames  of  the  successive  rectors  with  those  of 
the  successive  archbishops,  you  will  find  that,  by 
some  strange  coincidence,  they  are  often  the  same. 
Now,  though  Sir  William  Harcourt  and  I  may  think 
highly  of  ourselves,  I  doubt  very  much  if  our  fellow 
parishioners,  Yorkshiremen  to  the  backbone,  would 
look  upon  either  of  us  with  much  respect,  were  they 
to  learn  what  a  position  we  have  respectively  occu- 
pied as  horse-dealers.  To  begin  with  myself:  I 
owned  a  big,  powerful  animal,  sixteen  hands  high, 
but  unfortunately  broken-winded,  and  with  forelegs 
open  to  criticism.  As  I  had  let  my  house  for  a  year 
I  wanted  to  get  rid  of  him  ;  he  was  sold,  after  a 
good  deal  of  chaffering,  to  the  cabman  at  the  Barnes 
Station  for  four  pounds.  Unluckily  I  did  not  insist 
upon  having  the  money  paid  down  there  and  then  ; 
the  consequence  was,  that  during  a  visit  to  James 
Wortley  at  Mortlake,  the  butler  interrupted  me  in 
the  middle  of  my  soup  by  announcing  that  a  man  in  the 
hall  wished  to  speak  to  me  on  particular  business. 
When  I  went  out  I  found  my  friend  the  cabman,  who 
kept  repeating  that  the  horse  had  bitterly  disappointed 
him.  In  vain  I  suggested  that  you  could  not  expect 
to  buy  a  Derby  winner  for  four  pounds.  Admitting 
that,  he  still  was  determined  not  to  fulfil  his  engage- 


8  Sill  WILLIAM  HARCOURT'S  HUMILL1TION 

ment,  and  as  I  had  no  place,  except  my  bedroom,  to 
lodge  the  horse  in,  I  had  to  accept  his  terms  and  let 
the  beast  go  for  thirty  shillings,  the  market  value  of 
his  hide.  Still,  when  I  compare  myself,  from  the 
Yorkshire  point  of  view,  with  Sir  William  Harcourt, 
I  feel  a  certain  superiority  over  him,  and  can  thank 
God  that  I  am  not  even  as  that  Cabinet  Minister. 
He  bought  a  horse  for  one  hundred  guineas  from  a 
dealer  in  Oxfordshire.  After  the  meeting  of  Parlia- 
ment, he  got  immersed  in  his  briefs  (he  was  then  a 
Parliamentary  lawyer,  not  an  M.P.),  and  forgot  all 
about  the  park  hack  waiting  for  his  orders  at  Bicester. 
In  the  month  of  August,  just  before  starting  for 
Scotland,  his  memory  came  back  to  him,  and  he  sent 
off  in  a  hurry  to  his  agent,  explaining,  that  perhaps, 
as  he  had  no  longer  any  use  for  it,  the  horse  could 
be  sold  without  coming  to  town.  '  Certainly,'  was 
the  reply,  '  but  not  now,  in  the  autumn,  for  the  sum 
you  gave  in  the  spring/  The  hundred  guinea  horse 
only  fetched  seventy  guineas,  and  yet  Harcourt 
thought  himself  well  out  of  the  business.  But,  alas ! 
when  he  applied  for  his  money,  he  was  met  with  this 
courteous  rejoinder:  'Pardon  me,  but  you  have  for- 
gotten the  keep  of  the  horse,  you  have  forgotten 
various  other  items,  not  to  mention  a  farrier's  bill  or 
two.  In  point  of  fact,  you  owe  me  thirty  shillings, 
but,  under  the  circumstances,  I  will  not  insist  upon 
that.'  I,  at  least,  was  spared  that  humiliation. 
Though  fleeced,  I  retained  the  power  of  employing 
against  my  cabman  what  the  Latin  Grammar  calls 


BARON  MAULE'S  VIEWS  ABOUT  ORDER  9 

emphasis  or  energy  of  expression,  whilst  William 
Harcourt  had  to  lick  the  boots  of  his  magnanimous 
benefactor  in  silent  gratitude. 

I  am  not  sorry  that  this  story  has  occurred  thus 
early  in  the  book,  as  from  it  the  reader  may  learn  the 
manner  of  writing  which  if  I  were  to  write  at  all, 
could  not  but  be  forced  upon  me  by  the  circumstances 
of  the  case.  Mr.  Baron  Maule  in  one  of  his  sarcastic 
moods  addressed  from  the  bench  a  barrister  friend  of 
mine  thus  :  '  Mr.  Barker,  Mr.  Barker,  could  you  not 
state  your  facts  in  some  kind  of  order  ?  chronological 
is  the  best,  but  if  you  cannot  manage  that,  try  some 
other ;  alphabetical  if  you  please.'  Now  what  Barker 
had  to  say  for  himself  I  do  not  know.  For  me  the 
connecting  link  cannot  be  anything  else  but  the  asso- 
ciation of  ideas.  My  chronology  creeps  forward  and 
makes  its  ground  good,  but  it  is  always  in  subordina- 
tion, and  moves  slowly  along,  overlaid  and  poshed 
aside  like  the  Mole  and  other  underground  rivers  by 
suggestions  which  are  perpetually  rising  up  to  interfere 
with  its  natural  course.  I  write  from  memory  alone ; 
and  of  memory  the  principal  fountain-head  is,  and 
must  be,  the  association  of  ideas.  I  quite  under- 
stand a  methodical  man's  objection  to  the  rambling 
and  disjointed  style  of  my  book  as  it  stands,  but 
there  is  no  remedy,  and  he  must  take  it  or  leave  it. 

The  very  first  thing  I  discern,  on  looking  into 
my  mind,  is  this : — A  conversation  arose  in  my  hear- 
ing (I  was  then  between  three  and  four)  about  some 
extraordinary  feat  of  running  recently  performed  by 


10  MY  FIRST  RECOLLECTIONS 

certain  Red  Indians.  I  asked  how  it  happened  that 
they  were  so  much  swifter  than  white  men.  The 
answer  given  was,  '  because  they  never  wear  any 
clothes.'  Accordingly,  when  I  went  to  bed,  as  soon 
as  I  was  stripped,  I  darted  out  of  my  nurse's  hands, 
and  ran  all  over  the  house  with  an  experimental  zeal 
worthy  of  Bacon.  Whether  I  ran  faster  than  usual 
or  not  I  cannot  say.  I  only  know  that  on  being 
caught  I  was  severely  slapped,  as  that  manner  of 
criticising  the  speculations  of  the  young  natural 
philosopher  suggested  itself  to  my  nurse ;  this  was  to 
be  expected,  given  the  conditions  under  which  the 
experiment  was  tried. 

Next  after  that,  one  of  my  earliest  visions  is  the 
sense  of  being  walked  up  and  down  Oxford  Street, 
by  a  servant,  called  William  Bateman,  to  take  a  look 
at  the  illuminations  for  the  Peace  of  1814.  It  is  re- 
markable that,  about  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  and 
everything  connected  with  it,  my  memory  is  a  per- 
fect blank.  I  suppose  that,  owing  to  the  suddenness 
of  the  campaign,  and  the  terrible  losses  which  fell 
upon  the  land,  any  public  rejoicings  over  the  victory 
that  might  take  place  were  of  a  less  formal  and 
impressive  character.  In  the  course  of  the  Waterloo 
year,  I  think,  I  remember  with  perfect  distinctness 
undergoing  my  first  moral  struggle.  I  came  down 
to  dessert  one  evening,  and  applied  myself  to  some 
cherries  greedily  enough,  I  daresay,  when  some- 
body asked  me,  in  one  of  those  jesting  moods  so 
terrible  to  children,  whether,  if  my  papa  was  turned 


MY  FIRST  MORAL  STRUGGLE  11 

into  a  cherry,  I  would  eat  him  or  not  ?  Had  the 
question  been  put  to  me  some  years  later,  when  my 
natural  truthfulness  had  been  shaken  to  pieces  under 
the  grinding  tyranny  of  Monsieur  Cle'ment  my  Chelsea 
schoolmaster,  I  have  no  doubt  I  should  have  made  a 
very  proper  and  decorous  answer,  indefensible  on 
this  ground  only,  that  it  would  not  have  been  true. 
In  my  then  state  of  mind  however,  it  was  impossible 
for  me  to  tell  a  lie,  and  though  I  felt  all  the  time 
that  what  I  had  to  say  sounded  discreditable  to  me, 
and  would  probably  displease  my  hearers  (and  how 
bitterly  children  do  feel  such  things  is  seldom  re- 
membered, I  think,  by  grown-up  people),  out  it  had 
to  come.  I  answered  thus :  '  Well,  if  my  papa  was 
going  to  be  turned  back  again  from  the  cherry  into 
my  papa,  of  course  I  wouldn't  eat  him  ;  but  if  he  is 
to  keep  always  being  a  cherry,  why  shouldn't  I  ? ' 
Everybody  laughed,  to  my  surprise,  and  I  went  to 
bed  relieved  in  mind,  and  thinking  I  had  got  off 
cheaply  enough. 

The  year  1816  was,  as  is  notorious,  a  dreadful 
year  for  every  kind  of  agricultural  produce  ;  the  har- 
vest in  many  places  rotted  on  the  ground,  and  wide- 
spread distress  followed.  This,  no  doubt,  grew  up 
into  more  than  a  mere  social  evil :  it  helped  to 
aggravate  those  popular  discontents  which  had  already 
begun  to  develop  themselves  after  the  peace  of  1815. 
The  enormous  expenses  of  the  long  war,  indispensable 
to  our  national  existence  as  they  were,  now  that  all 
excitement  had  subsided  and  the  early  glow  of 


12  PAIN  A  DISCRETION 

triumph  had  ceased  to  give  delight,  were  felt  to  be  all 
the  more  galling,  just  because  peace  and  dulness  had 
been  restored.  As  one  recovering  from  a  fever  we 
were  out  of  danger,  but  our  convalescence,  like  the 
convalescence  of  ordinary  patients,  was  accompanied 
by  peevish  weakness  and  irritability,  so  that  every 
little  hardship  easily  enlarged  itself  into  a  serious  evil, 
and  this,  alas,  was  not  a  little  hardship.  A  very  fine 
harvest  might  have  parried  the  mischiefs  for  a  certain 
time  and  to  a  certain  extent ;  but  the  worst  harvest 
known  for  a  hundred  years  naturally  operated  in 
the  other  direction,  and  greatly  increased  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  Government.  Men  resorted  to  small 
expedients,  but,  as  might  be  expected,  without 
much  success.  At  fashionable  dinners,  no  such 
thing  as  '  pain  a  discretion '  could  be  permitted  ; 
to  ask  for  a  second  piece  of  bread  became,  as  it 
were,  a  capital  crime — a  crime  of  the  same  kind  no 
doubt  as  that  well-known  felony  in  the  Arabian 
Nights,  which  wrung  from  Bedreddin  Hassan,  ex- 
pecting to  be  at  once  impaled,  the  plaintive  inquiry  : 
'  Is  it  then  a  capital  crime  not  to  put  pepper  into  a 
cream-tart  ? ' 

My  knowledge  of  that  unhappy  season  is  con- 
fined to  this  one  fact.  My  father's  housekeeper  took 
me  to  her  room,  and  solemnly  showed  me  a  bag  of 
flour  made  from  the  potato  :  this  was  then  used  as  a 
substitute  for  wheaten  flour,  a  thing  scarcely  to  be 
obtained  in  a  satisfactory  condition,  at  any  price, 
after  that  disastrous  harvest.  In  the  meantime,  my 


MY  EARLY  EDUCATION  13 

education  began  and  went  on  ;  my  first  teacher  was 
a  family  friend,  the  learned  Dr.  Noehden,  author  of  a 
German  Grammar  and  other  works  highly  valued  in 
their  day.  He  had  been  private  tutor  to  my  uncles  at 
Eton  and  Nunappleton,  and  was  afterwards  promoted 
to  a  place  in  the  British  Museum — a  post  connecting 
him  with  the  library  department,  where  he  did  good 
service,  as  his  knowledge  and  acquirements  fitted  him 
for  it  exactly.  He  taught  me  Latin,  and  began  to 
teach  me  Greek  after  I  had  passed  my  seventh  birth- 
day. I  used  to  go  every  morning  with  my  lessons, 
well  or  ill  prepared,  to  his  chambers  in  the  Albany, 
and  when  matters  went  happily,  brought  back  a 
certificate  of  honour — Bene,  perbene,  ultra  perbene, 
—according  to  circumstances.  Now  each  of  these 
tickets  had  a  fixed  value  in  pence,  according  to  its 
rank  in  the  scale  of  merit  ;  the  bene,  twopence,  the 
perbene  threepence,  the  ultra  perbene,  'like  angels' 
visits  few  and  far  between,'  a  real  silver  sixpence. 
These  are  recollections  not  to  be  despised  ;  if  I  were 
inclined  to  indulge  in  fine  writing,  I  should  say  that 
they  constituted  an  oasis  in  the  desert  of  memory, 
seeing  that,  in  spite  of  my  best  endeavours,  I  have 
never  been  able  to  make  any  net  profit  out  of  literature 
since.  My  poems  are  entirely  out  of  print,1  and  any 
stray  copy,  thanks  I  believe  to  Mr.  Hermann  Vezin's 
recitations,  sells  at  a  high  price  in  the  market,  but 
that  of  course  does  me  no  good  ;  on  the  contrary,  I 

1  This  was  written  before  Messrs.  Macmityan  republished  them  the 
other  day. 


14  MY  ONLY  LITERARY  SUCCESS 

lost  twenty  pounds  by  the  last  edition,  so  that  if  I 
had  been  able  to  put  a  single  bene  twopence  out  of 
them  and  my  other  books  absolutely  to  the  credit  side 
of  my  publisher's  account,  it  would  have  been  much 
to  my  advantage. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Monsieur  Clement's  school — Distinguished  pupils  of  Monsieur  Cle'ment 
— French  teaching — Prenez  la  Marque — My  first  pun  and  its  con- 
sequences— Mr.  Codrington's  rice  pudding — Mr.  Locke  King's 
meringues — The  air  pump — Professor  Daubeny  at  Oxford — The 
Thistlewood  Conspiracy. 

AFTER  this,  nothing  occurs  to  me  worth  recording, 
till  I  went  with  a  heavy  heart  to  the  school  I  re- 
ferred to  above,  M.  Clement's  school  at  Chelsea. 
This  was  then  a  fashionable  school,  and  of  high  repute, 
a  repute  on  some  grounds  well  deserved.  The  late 
George  Lewis,  the  present  Lord  Lovelace,  Ryders, 
Russells,  and  Harcourts  (in eluding  my  dear  friend  and 
relative  Egerton  Harcourt,  whose  loss  all  his  York- 
shire neighbourhood  still  is  lamenting),  the  Romillys, 
the  Blackwoods,  Sir  Spencer  Robinson,  Walter 
Hamilton  (the  late  Bishop  of  Salisbury),  and  his 
brother  Edward  (still  surviving),  Lord  Delamere, 
Richard  Croft,  afterwards  Fellow  of  Exeter,  one  of 
the  most  popular  men  and  one  of  the  best  oars 
at  Oxford,  in  company  with  many  others  whom  it 
would  take  too  long  a  time  to  enumerate,  belonged 
to  it  in  their  day.  Some  of  these  had  left  before  I 
joined,  others,  the  majority  indeed  of  those  named 
above,  were  my  own  contemporaries.  M.  Clement, 
in  addition  to  the  usual  private  school  Greek  and 


16  EARLY  INSTRUCTION  IN  FRENCH 

Latin,  undertook  in  a  special  manner  to  teach  liis 
boys  French,  and  in  this  object  he  certainly  succeeded. 
I  should  say  that  I  never  met  any  set  of  English 
men  afterwards  (I  do  not  speak  of  women  or  girls), 
who,  without  pretending  to  be  deep  scholars,  managed 
their  French,  as  a  spoken  language,  with  as  much 
ease  and  familiarity  as  we  did.  But  this  knowledge 
I  thought  then,  and  think  still,  was  dearly  bought. 
We  were  not  allowed  to  breathe  a  word  of  English, 
and  twice  a  day,  after  dinner  and  after  supper,  two  or 
three  unhappy  '  messieurs  '  who  suffered  under  what 
Clement  called  '  the  mark,'  had  to  reply  to  his  per- 
emptory summons.  Everyone  forced  to  acknowledge 
the  possession  of  this  encumbrance  (there  were,  if  I 
remember  right,  three  classes  or  divisions)  was  kept 
in,  as  M.  Clement  finished  his  wine,  and  set  to 
learn  a  certain  task  while  their  fellows  were  amusing 
themselves  hi  the  playground  or  elsewhere.  If  this 
had  been  all  the  infliction  it  would  not  have  been 
absolutely  intolerable,  but  the  holder  of  the  mark  (a 
name  only,  and  not  a  visible  thing)  was  expected  to 
pass  it  on.  If  by  so  doing  you  did  not  shake  it  off 
between  dinner  and  supper,  besides  the  usual  task 
you  probably  got  your  ears  boxed  ;  if,  when  a  third 
summons  came,  you  still  continued  responsible  for 
another  failure  to  fix  it  upon  some  one  else,  the  cane 
or  the  rod  came  into  play,  and  a  vista  of  punishments 
ever  increasing  loomed  large  in  the  distance.  Hence 
the  pressure  upon  us  grew  perfectly  odious.  You 
were  betrayed  into  saying  at  cricket  or  trap-ball,  t  Up 


HOW  LA  MARQUE  WAS  EVADED       17 

with  the  ball  there,  quick  ! '  or  the  like,  and  imme- 
diately a  lurking  spy  at  your  elbow  pounced  upon 
you  with  these  words,  '  Prenez  la  marque  !  '  Out 
of  this,  ill-blood  grew  up  between  the  boys,  and  an 
atmosphere  of  suspicion  and  distrust  poisoned  all  our 
fun.  Before  I  left,  we  of  the  first  class,  who  were 
expected  to  speak  not  only  French,  but  correct  French, 
took  the  matter  into  our  own  hands.  We  agreed 
to  accept  the  mark  in  rotation,  and  got  up  cases  of 
disputed  grammar  (knowing  perfectly  well  what  the 
result  would  be),  in  order  that  the  French  master 
might  solemnly  determine  whether  the  mark  had 
been  properly  passed  or  not.  '  M.  Pommier, 
Robinson  a  dit,  "  Je  voudrais  que  j'avais ; "  n'est-ce  pas 
qu'il  aurait  du  dire,  "  Je  voudrais  que  j'eusse  "  ? '  '  Cer- 
tainement,  Doyle  ;  Robinson,  vous  avez  la  marque.' 
'M.  Pommier,  Doyle  a  dit,  " demicouronne ; "  n'est- 
ce  pas  qu'il  aurait  du  dire  "  petit  ecu  "  ? '  '  Certainement, 
Croft ;  Doyle,  vous  avez  la  marque.'  In  order  that 
suspicion  might  not  be  aroused,  the  worst  linguists, 
who  naturally  derived  the  greatest  advantage  from 
this  piece  of  strategy,  were  expected  occasionally  to 
devote  themselves  for  the  common  good,  and  to 
pretend  that  the  mark  remained  with  them.  At  the 
second,  and  still  more  at  the  third  call  they  might  get 
a  caning  no  doubt,  once  in  a  way,  but  then  for  the 
rest  of  the  schooltime  they  were  as  free  as  air,  having 
only  to  be  on  their  guard,  and  take  care  that  they 
did  not  speak  English  above  their  breath  when  an 
usher  was  within  hearing.  The  relief  afforded 


18  STATE  OF  THE  SCHOOL 

by  this  defensive  association  proved  great  indeed, 
though  I  cannot  defend  it  on  moral  grounds.  In- 
deed, I  have  always  felt  since,  low  down  in  my 
mind,  a  certain  soreness,  as  if  some  of  the  original 
bloom  had  been  irrecoverably  rubbed  off  my  natural 
frankness  and  sincerity  under  the  process  of  learning 
French  with  the  screw  of  '  prenez  la  marque  '  upon 
me.  Otherwise,  Clement  was  in  some  respects  a 
good  master,  in  others  not  so  good  a  one.  Though 
poorly  skilled  in  Latin  versification,  a  deficiency 
which  placed  his  pupils  at  some  disadvantage  when 
they  migrated  into  a  public  school,  we  had  nothing 
else  to  complain  of  in  the  matter  of  Latin  and  Greek. 
He  was  also  well  versed  in  Italian,  and,  setting  him 
aside,  the  French  and  Latin  ushers  as  a  rule  did  well 
enough.  We  were,  moreover,  thoroughly  instructed 
in  arithmetic  and  the  elements  of  mathematics  by  Mr. 
Hall,  a  man  of  very  considerable  ability  and  acquire- 
ments. He  was  one  who  might  have  done  much  better 
for  himself,  had  he  not  succumbed  to  a  passion  for 
snuff  and  an  uncertain  weakness,  to  say  the  least  of 
it,  in  the  direction  of  gin.  On  the  other  hand,  M. 
Clement  was  capricious,  apt  to  be  unjust,  and  of  a 
very  variable  and  untrustworthy  temper ;  given,  more- 
over, to  indulge  his  favourites  and  to  press  with  great 
severity  upon  any  boy  whom  he  had  selected  as  the 
object  of  his  dislike  ;  so  that,  upon  the  whole,  he  was 
unpopular,  and  unpopular  with  good  reason.  We  were 
also  ill-fed,  ill-warmed,  and  ill-playgrounded.  Hence, 
as  I  look  at  the  scar  of  a  broken  chilblain  upon  my 


STORIES  CONNECTED  WITH  CLEMENT'S  19 

forefinger,  still  very  visible,  I  can  say  to  myself,  con- 
scientiously, '  No,  it  was  anything  but  a  nice  school.' 
Before  passing  on  to  Eton,  I  shall  indulge  myself 
by  telling  one  or  two  stories  which  have  remained 
with  me  since  that  private  school  period. 

I.     MY  FIRST  PUN  AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES. 

This  joke  (considering  its  results  it  could  hardly 
be  called  a  bon-mot)  was  not  perpetrated  under  the 
happiest  of  auspices.  Our  classical  master,  one  Mr. 
Hutchinson,  a  dreamy  sort  of  man,  apparently  de- 
voted himself  in  his  leisure  moments  to  playing  at 
metaphysics  ;  at  any  rate,  whilst  we  were  reading 
Xenophon's  '  Memorabilia  of  Socrates '  with  him,  he 
kept  continually  asking  different  boys  what  the 
Summum  Bonum  might  be,  and  no  answer  ever 
satisfied  him.  One  victim  replied,  'happiness,' 
another,  '  virtue,'  the  third,  '  a  good  conscience,' 
and  so  on  ;  but,  '  No,  no,  not  exactly  that,'  was 
always  murmured  in  return  by  our  mystical  tutor. 
At  last,  when  we  were  all  greatly  bored  by  the  agita- 
tion of  a  subject  quite  beyond  our  years,  he  turned  to 
me,  and  I,  being  saucily  inclined,  suggested  by  way 
of  answer,  '  What  should  you  say,  sir,  to  a  very  large 
magnum  bonum  ?  '  If  at  that  moment  Milton's 
lines  : 

How  charming  is  divine  philosophy, 

Not  harsh  and  crabbed  as  dull  fools  suppose, 

But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute, 

had  come  into  my  mind,   I  should  certainly   have 


20          MOIs7SIEUR  CLEMENT  AS  DEMOSTHENES 

demurred  to  their  exactness  ;  for  divine  philosophy 
was  extremely  harsh  and  crabbed,  rose  up  in  its  wrath, 
and  dragged  me,  as  a  culprit,  to  the  head-master's 
desk,  in  order  that  I  might  be  '  beaten  with  many 
stripes.'  M.  Clement  had  a  fancy  for  being  epi- 
grammatic and  rhetorical  in  his  punishments,  but  his 
rhetoric  generally  took  a  Demosthenic  form.  Action, 
action,  action,  being  his  motto — perhaps  even  more 
emphatically  than  in  the  case  of  Demosthenes  himself. 
Accordingly,  he  stood  over  me  brandishing  his  cane, 
and  adding  energy  to  his  remarks  by  a  menacing 
swish  :  '  Je  pardonne  1'indolence,  souvent ' — swish 
— '  la  desobeissance,  quelquefois,' — swish,  swish — 
'  mais,  1'insolence,  JAMAIS  ! ' — crack,  crack,  crack — I 
got  it  hot  over  my  back  and  shoulders  ;  and  retired 
to  my  bench,  deeply  meditating  in  my  own  mind 
that  I  should  have  done  better  if  I  had  swallowed 
my  joke  without  uttering  it,  or  kept  it,  at  any  rate, 
for  a  more  appreciative  audience. 

II.     MONSIEUR  CODRINGTON'S  FASTIDIOUSNESS. 

Codrington,  afterwards  Admiral  of  the  Fleet,  had 
reached  the  top  of  the  school  a  year  before  I  did. 
We  were  not,  as  I  have  said  above,  well  fed  at  M. 
Clement's  ;  no,  certainly  not  well  fed  ;  and  the  habit 
which  prevailed  of  loading  our  stomachs  with  odious 
puddings  before  we  were  allowed  to  touch  a  bit  of 
meat  was  earnestly  disapproved  of.  Every  Tuesday, 
in  particular,  an  especially  filthy  mess  made  its 
appearance  before  our  roast  mutton.  Now,  head  boy 


MR.   LOCKE  KING  21 

Codrington,  sitting  as  he  did  at  the  top  of  the  table, 
next  Madame  Clement,  was  in  full  view  of  M. 
Clement,  who  sat  at  the  bottom.  Codrington,  as  he 
ate,  unwarily  allowed  a  grimace  of  disgust  to  escape 
from  him,  and  Clement's  voice  thundered  out  upon 
his  critic  at  once — 'M.  Codrington,  M.  Codring- 
ton,  que  faites-vous  la  ?  Si  le  Prince  Regent  venait 
diner  ici' — (an  event,  I  may  remark,  rather  more 
unlikely  than  Bishop  Butler's  typical  improbability, 
viz.,  that  the  sun  should  fail  to  rise  at  his  appointed 
hour  to-morrow) — '  je  ne  lui  donnerais  pas  de  meilleur 
ponding  que  cela  !  Mettez-vous  a  genoux,  M.  Cod- 
rington, et  mangez  cela  tout  de  suite  ! '  M.  Codring- 
ton had  no  resource  left  but  to  do  as  Clement  told 
him — whilst  his  enemy  watched  the  process  of  de- 
glutition and  the  spoon  tiring  in  its  stride  like  a 
beaten  racehorse,  with  a  look  of  cruel  glee.  As  soon 
as  the  last  morsel  disappeared,  and  Codrington' s  sigh 
of  relief  silently  delivered  itself — '  Madame  Clement, 
Madame  Clement,  donnez  encore  du  pouding  a  M. 
Codrington,'  was  bellowed  out  by  his  relentless  per- 
secutor. I  can  only  hope  that  Madame  Clement 
was  'ministering  angel'  enough  to  ladle  out  no  great 
quantity  ;  still,  how  much  mutton  M.  Codrington 
got  through  after  that  second  helping,  it  would  be  rash 
to  say. 

III.     MR.  LOCKE  KING'S  MEANNESS. 

One  Sunday  night,  ten  or  twelve  boys  in  the  long 
room — I,  luckily  for  myself,  not  being  one  of  them — 


22  MONSIEUR  CLEMENT'S  BLUNDERBUSS 

held  a  solemn  festival  after  everybody  was  in  bed 
and  the  house  quiet ;  but  alas  !  in  the  midst  of 
their  revels,  Clement  suddenly  appeared  in  his  old 
grey  dressing-gown  carrying  a  large  blunderbuss  ; 
Madame  Clement,  in  '  robes  loosely  flowing,  hair  as 
free,'  at  his  elbow,  with  a  candle.  It  seems  that 
some  years  previously,  more  than  one  burglary  had 
been  attempted  upon  Durham  House,  with  what 
particular  hope  of  booty,  God  knows  (the  burglars 
must  have  been  crazy,  I  think)  !  This  fact,  which  I 
heard  long  afterwards  from  a  man  of  older  standing 
than  myself,  explained  the  blunderbuss — a  mystery 
inscrutable  at  the  time.  I  need  not  describe  in 
detail  what  happened  then ;  but  next  morning, 
of  course,  severe  punishments  were  inflicted.  M. 
Clement,  perhaps  conscious  that  he  had  made  an  ass 
of  himself  by  bringing  firearms  to  bear  upon  enemies 
not  more  formidable  than  figs  and  raspberry  vine- 
gar, came  down  in  one  of  his  very  worst  humours  ; 
when,  suddenly,  as  he  was  haranguing  and  sentenc- 
ing the  criminals,  the  school-door  opened,  and  in 
walked  Locke  King,  who  had  been  spending  Satur- 
day and  Sunday  at  Lansdowne  House.  He  looked 
as  innocent  as  a  daisy,  but  carried  a  basket  in  his 
hand,  upon  which  M.  Clement's  angry  curiosity 
fastened  at  once  :  '  Qu'est-ce  que  vous  avez  dans 
ce  panier-la,  M.  King  ? '  Locke  King  explained 
that  it  contained  some  meringues  and  other  sweet- 
meats, given  him  by  the  Lansdowne  House  con- 
fectioner that  morning.  '  And,  pray,  sir,'  roared 


LORD  LANSDOWNE'S  MERINGUES  23 

out  M.  Clement,  in  a  glow  of  virtuous  indignation, 
'  was  M.  le  Marquis  de  Lansdowne  aware  of  this  pro- 
ceeding ? '  Locke  King,  who  knew  very  well  that  if 
the  idea  had  suggested  itself  to  Lord  Lansdowne,  he 
would  undoubtedly  have  given  his  confectioner  the 
necessary  orders,  and  that,  in  any  case,  he  would 
have  been  glad  that  the  boy  should  take  back  with 
him  to  school  the  pastry  in  question,  answered  in 
perfect  good  faith — '  Well,  no,  sir — I  cannot  say  that 
he  did  exactly.'  '  And,  sir,'  retorted  our  noble- 
minded  instructor,  '  have  you  had  the  baseness  to 
accept  a  present  from  a  menial  servant  without  his 
master's  knowledge  ?  You  ought  to  be  ashamed 
of  yourself  !  Deliver  up  to  me  that  basket  at  once ! ' 
Now,  the  logic  of  the  case  would  seem  to  have  re- 
quired that  the  confectioner's  dainties  should  go  back 
to  Lansdowne  House  at  the  earliest  possible  oppor- 
tunity. But  logic  and  practical  good  sense  are  not 
always  in  unison,  and  M.  Clement  was  wise  enough 
to  devour  the  meringues  and  other  sweetmeats  him- 
self— without  any  conscientious  scruples  as  to  the 
validity  of  his  title  to  them. 

It  is  curious,  as  showing  how  capriciously  memory 
acts,  that,  when  these  stories  were  told,  many  years 
afterwards,  to  the  heroes  of  them,  they  had  totally 
forgotten  all  the  circumstances  of  which  I,  though  an 
outsider,  happened  to  retain  so  accurate  a  recol- 
lection.1 

1  Do  I !     Frederick  Romilly  is  said  by  others  to  have  been  the 
hero  of  this  story — not  Locke  King.     It  is  odd  if  I  have  been  mis- 

3 


24  THE  ROMILLYS 

Among  the  most  popular  boys  at  M.  Clement's 
were  the  three  Romillys  :  they  were  all  clever,  all 
good-natured,  and  two  of  them,  at  least,  Charles  and 
Frederick,  distinguished  by  their  activity  in  running 
and  jumping,  their  skill  in  games,  and  their  mastery 
of  athletics  in  general.  Charles  and  Frederick  were 
also  the  two  best  dancers  in  the  school,  and  twice  a 
week,  under  the  superintendence  of  a  certain  M. 
Parodi,  used  to  exhibit  their  superior  proficiency,  by 
performing,  in  first-rate  style,  the  solemn  minuet  de 
la  cour,  succeeded  by  the  sprightliest  of  gavottes,  for 
the  edification  of  M.  Parodi's  less  advanced  pupils. 
Of  Charles,  during  the  many  years  that  have  glided 
away  since  we  were  boys  together,  I  have  seen  little  ; 
perhaps,  though  the  best-natured  and  kindest-hearted 
of  men,  he  might  wish  that  little  to  have  been  less  ; 
inasmuch  as  the  last  time  I  recollect  meeting  him  at 
dinner,  I  was  his  partner  afterwards  at  whist,  and,  I 
am  sorry  to  say,  revoked,  in  the  most  blunder-headed 
manner  :  so  that  the  renewal  of  our  school  acquain- 
tanceship cost  him  sundry  half  crowns.  With 
Frederick,  however,  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  re- 
viving, at  the  Board  of  Customs,  all  our  early  asso- 
ciations connected  with  Durham  House,  and  a  great 
delight  the  revival  has  been  to  me.  Looking  back, 
both  at  M.  Clement's,  and  again  at  Eton,  so  many 
friendships  formed  in  youth  have  remained  unbroken 

taken,  as  Locke  King's  face,  coming  in  at  the  school  door,  has  been 
present  to  me  ever  since.  I  can  see  him  now  shaking  hands  with  the 
servant  who  brought  him  back. 


SAM  JOHNSON  ON  FRIENDSHIP  25 

and  unimpaired  through  life,  that  I  feel  to  the  ground 
of  my  heart  the  full  force  of  old  Sam  Johnson's 
admirable  dictum  on  the  subject,  l  Those  that  love 
longest,  love  best.  Esteem  of  great  powers  and 
admirable  qualities  newly  discerned  may  embroider  a 
day  or  a  week,  but  a  friendship  of  twenty  years  (for 
twenty  years,  in  my  case,  read  fifty,  or  even  sixty)  is 
interwoven  with  the  texture  of  life.  A  friendship 
may  often  be  found  and  lost ;  but  an  old  friend  can- 
not be  found  ;  and  nature  has  provided  that  he  can- 
not be  often  or  easily  lost.'  This  is  a  fine  sentence — 
pleasant  to  read  and  to  believe  in  ;  but  I  sometimes 
fancy  that  it  comes  home  to  you,  even  with  greater 
keenness,  when  you  find,  as  every  now  and  then  you 
do  find,  that  it  has  suddenly  broken  down  under 
your  feet,  and  you  have  reluctantly  to  confess  to« 
yourself  that,  though  generally,  it  is  not  absolutely 
true. 

I  have  not  much  more  to  say  about  my  Chelsea 
private  school  ;  our  early  introduction  to  physical 
science,  if  it  did  not  prepare  the  soil  of  our  minds  for 
a  growth  of  future  Newtons  and  Faradays,  afforded 
us,  on  one  occasion,  at  any  rate,  a  good  deal  of 
amusement.  We  used  to  be  taken,  every  now  and 
then,  mostly  in  Lent,  I  think,  to  popular  lectures  on 
electricity,  galvanism,  optics,  and  so  on.  At  the 
particular  lecture  I  am  speaking  of,  the  air-pump  was 
called  into  play,  and  one  or  two  of  Clement's  boys — 
I  being  one  of  them — volunteered  to  undergo  the 
ordinary  experiments  belonging  to  that  instrument : 


26  PROFESSOR  DAUBENY 

and,  to  begin  with,  had  the  air  under  our  hands  ex- 
hausted and  drawn  away.  As  soon  as  the  first  paw 
had  been  glued  down  to  the  vacuum,  by  the  pressure 
of  the  atmosphere  from  above,  our  lecturer  began  to 
declaim,  in  a  very  grandiloquent  strain.  '  There,  sir,' 
said  he,  addressing  the  prisoner  of  science,  *  my  cap- 
tive you  are,  and  my  captive  you  will  remain  till  I 
think  fit  to  release  you;  not  Alexander  the  Great 
himself,  not  all  the  legions  of  Xerxes,  the  great  king, 
could  drag  you  from  your  present  position  without 
my  consent.'  Upon  this,  the  urchin,  whose  palm, 
I  suppose,  was  somewhat  smaller  than  had  been 
reckoned  on,  so  that  the  exclusion  of  the  air  had  not 
quite  completed  itself,  gave  '  a  long  pull,  a  strong 
pull,  and  a  pull  all  together,'  up  came  his  hand,  in  the 
sight  of  the  whole  assembly,  and  we  laughed  till  we 
cried.  Then,  as  the  rest  of  us  came  tumbling  up, 
one  after  the  other,  the  trumpet  was  played  in  a 
much  lower  key,  and  the  successive  experiments  had 
no  success  at  all,  till  at  last,  a  small  girl,  really 
trapped  and  held  fast,  enabled  the  professional  orator 
to  recover  his  confidence  and  self-esteem. 

A  double  failure  of  the  same  kind  used  to  be 
quoted  with  equal  glee  by  the  undergraduates  of  my 
time  at  Oxford.  Daubeny,  the  Professor  of  Che- 
mistry, nearly  as  short-sighted  and  awkward  as  I  am 
(but  then,  I  never  attempt  to  perform  experiments), 
was  showing  off  to  his  class,  and  descanting,  in  the 
happy  predynarnite  days,  upon  some  terribly  explo- 
sive substances.  He  went  on  thus  :  '  Now,  gentle- 


THISTLE  WOOD'S  CONSPIRACY  27 

men,  you  see  those  two  packets  :  I  shall  be  upon  my 
guard  ;  you  may  rely  upon  my  care,  for  if  by  any 
sad  accident  they  happened  to  come  together,  awful 
indeed  would  the  consequences  be  ! '  A  moment 
afterwards,  whilst  he  blundered  blindly  over  the  dif- 
ferent articles  before  him,  this  was  the  very  thing 
that  did  happen  ;  but,  fortunately  for  his  audience, 
as  he  had  compounded  them  with  the  same  slovenli- 
ness that  he  handled  them,  nothing  occurred. 

Whilst  still  at  Durham  House,  I  was  taken  by 
the  William  Bateman  mentioned  above  to  Cato 
Street,  and  saw  the  room  where  Thistle  wood  and  his 
accomplices  had  lately  been  arrested.  The  Thistle- 
wood  conspiracy  is  now,  I  dare  say,  scarcely  remem- 
bered by  the  young  men  and  young  women  of  the 
day — but  it  might  have  been  an  extremely  serious 
affair.  The  plan  was  to  knock,  in  a  careless  manner, 
at  the  door  of  Lord  Harrowby's  house  in  Grosvenor 
Square,  where  a  ministerial  dinner  should  have  been 
held — to  rush  in,  as  soon  as  the  footman  opened  the 
door,  murder  all  the  ministers,  and  attempt  imme- 
diately afterwards  to  surprise  the  Tower,  the  Bank, 
and  other  public  buildings.  The  reader  must  recol- 
lect that  Peel's  new  policemen  had  not  yet  come  into 
existence.  One  of  the  band,  however,  either  shrunk 
back  from  this  wholesale  murder,  or  else  thought  he 
could  make  a  better  thing  of  it  by  turning  informer. 
Through  his  intervention  the  plot  was  baffled,  and 
the  gang  of  plotters  captured  in  the  room  where  they 
held  their  meetings.  Poor  Ruthven,  the  detective 


28  WINTER  ROSES 

officer,  fell  dead,  being  instantly  killed  by  Thistle- 
wood  ;  but,  I  am  happy  to  say,  neither  the  head 
ruffian  nor  any  of  his  associates  escaped  the  gallows 
which  was  their  due.  Many  years  afterwards,  I 
wanted  some  roses  for  January  20,  a  time  of  year 
when  roses  are  not  so  easy  to  find.  Oddly  enough, 
the  man  who  finally  obtained  them  for  me  was  a  son 
of  the  Ruthven  mentioned  above  ;  so  that  when  I 
got  hold  of  them,  I  could  not  help  saying  to  myself, 
'  Is  Cato  Street  a  proper  street,  or  this  representative 
of  Cato  Street  a  proper  person  to  entrust  a  love- 
tale  to?' 


CHAPTER  III. 

My  introduction  to  Eton — State  of  Eton  education  in  my  time — 
Elected  to  the  Debating  Society  before  Mr.  Gladstone — Mr.  Glad- 
stone's maiden  speech — Milnes  Gaskell — Bruce,  afterwards  Lord 
Elgin — Arthur  Hallam — His  early  and  unexpected  death — Some 
account  of  his  character — The  Eton  Miscellany — Sir  John  Hanmer 
— Dr.  Keate — Keate  v.  Arnold — Eton  v.  Rugby — Commercial  crisis 
of  1825. 

IN  the  beginning  of  the  year  1823  I  left  M. 
Clement's  and  went  to  Eton  as  a  pupil  of  Mr.,  now 
Dr.  Okes,  the  respected  Provost  of  King's  College, 
Cambridge. 

This  was  a  very  important  step  in  my  career. 
There  had  been  some  question  of  my  being  sent  as  a 
gown-boy  at  the  Charterhouse.  My  father,  however 
(and  I  have  always  been  glad  of  it),  finally  decided 
otherwise. 

At  Eton  I  spent  several  thoroughly  happy  years; 
at  Eton  I  formed  friendships  which  have  coloured 
and  brightened  my  whole  life.  At  Eton  my  character 
shaped  itself,  and  I  became  much  the  same  Frank 
Doyle  that  I  have  continued  to  be  ever  since.  I 
cannot  say  that,  technically  speaking,  it  was  a  good 
school.  Some  Greek  and  Latin  poetry  had  to  be 
learnt  by  heart  (no  one  could  escape  from  that),  though 


30  EDUCATION  AT  ETON 

even  for  those  repetitions  little  accuracy  was  required, 
not  to  mention  that  a  quick-eyed  boy,  by  sidling  up 
to  the  desk,  often  managed  to  read  from  the  master's 
book  the  lines  that  he  appeared  to  be  diligently  re- 
peating.    For  any  other  form  of  study  there  was  no 
necessity  at  all.     An  idle  fellow  might  elude  all  his 
recurring  tasks  from  year's  end  to  year's  end.     He 
could  run  the  chance  of  not  being  called  up  in  his 
class;  even  if  he  were  called  up,  he  had  heard  the 
lesson  construed  at  his  tutor's,  and  again  might  hope, 
supposing  he  had  not  attended  to  that  exposition  in 
the  pupil-room,  that  some  one  at  his  side,  or  behind 
him,  would  be  able  to  prompt  him  safely  away  from 
the  block.     He  could  always  get  his  exercises  done 
for  him,  or  find '  an  old  copy  '  on  the  subject  he  had 
to  deal  with  among  masses  of  manuscript  carefully 
preserved  through  many  generations  of  Eton  boys. 
He  could  therefore  spend  his  time  pretty  much  as 
he  liked.     He  probably  knew  somehow  or  other  that 
'  two  and  two  make  four,'  but  they  might  make  three 
or  five,  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  without  giving 
'  Henry's  holy  shade  '  the  slightest  annoyance.     The 
workers,  or  '  saps,'  as  they  were  called,  wrote  a  great 
many  Latin  verses,  learnt  a  lot  of  Horace,  Homer, 
and  Virgil,  to  repeat  every  morning,  and  looked  over 
their  construing  lessons,  which  were  mere  trifles  both 
in  quantity  and  character,  more  or  less  carefully  be- 
fore going  into  school.      I  soon  acquired  ease  and 
fluency  in  rattling  over  my  elegiacs,  hexameters,  and 
alcaics,  and  used  as  a  rule  to  be  '  sent  up  for  good,'  as 


THE  CHANCELLOR'S  PRIZE  AT  OXFORD          31 

the  phrase  was,  at  the  end  of  the  term.  There  was, 
however,  one  real  obstacle  to  reaching  excellence  even 
in  Latin  versification,  which  rather  stood  in  the  way 
of  Eton  men  at  the  universities.  Harrow,  Winchester, 
Rugby,  had  already  instituted  annual  prizes  ;  this 
introduced  a  habit  of  more  careful  work  and  thought 
among  our  rivals,  and  no  one  could  expect  to  win  a 
Chancellor's  prize  unless  his  competing  poem  were 
well- written  throughout.  Now  among  us,  who  had 
nothing  of  the  kind  to  look  forward  to  (being  simply 
called  upon  to  knock  off  in  an  hour  or  two  a  number 
of  verses  twice  a  week),  it  became  the  practice  to  con- 
centrate our  whole  activity  upon  the  more  attractive 
parts  of  a  given  subject,  leaving  the  'juncture 
callidse  '  to  be  supplied  by  our  tutors,  who  read  over 
and  corrected  all  exercises  (a  stupid  practice,  I  think, 
if  only  on  account  of  the  facilities  it  gave  for  the 
accumulation  of  the  aforesaid  old  copies),  before  they 
were  delivered  up  in  school.  These  habits  of  rapid 
and  careless  composition  constituted,  as  I  have  said, 
a  certain  disadvantage  to  Eton  men  at  Oxford,  which 
lasted  till  prizes  were  established  at  Eton  also.  At 
least  that  was  the  excuse  I  made  to  myself  twice 
over,  on  failing  to  secure  the  Chancellor's  Latin  prize 
at  the  university  ;  though,  most  likely,  if  that  excuse 
had  not  been  ready  to  my  hand,  I  should  have  found 
another  just  as  good  to  explain  away  the  untoward 
fact. 

After  having  been  a  year  or  two  at  Eton,  I  joined 
the  Debating  Society,  held  at  Miss  Hatton's,  a  '  cook 


32  THE  ETON  DEBATING  SOCIETY 

and  confectioner/  so  that  we  were  able  to  combine 
bodily  refreshment  with  intellectual  culture.  This 
turned  out  to  be  a  great  step  in  my  school  progress, 
conferring  upon  me  advantages  which  I  could  have 
obtained  nowhere  else.  The  one  compensation,  indeed, 
for  a  careless  system  which  the  easy-going  practices 
of  Mater  Etona  bestowed  on  her  boys  was  our  perfect 
freedom.  Physical  freedom  for  those  who  preferred 
it,  but  also  intellectual  freedom  for  any  one  who 
chose.  The  Debating  Society  thus  brought  together 
many  of  the  cleverer  boys  from  their  different  forms, 
and  not  only  that,  but  from  every  corner  of  the 
college  as  well.  By  this  means,  those  who  would 
otherwise  have  hardly  known  each  other  to  speak  to> 
were  soon  turned  into  intimate  friends.  They  read 
with,  or,  as  Whigs  and  Tories,  in  opposition  to  each 
other,  they  discussed  historical  and  literary  subjects, 
they  argued  and  split  hairs,  and  walked  together,  dis- 
puting about  Shakspeare,  Milton,  the  old  dramatists, 
and  so  on.  Hence,  day  after  day,  our  wits  were 
sharpened  by  these  collisions,  and  we  made  more  way, 
unless  I  am  mistaken,  out  of  school  than  in  school. 
I  do  not  deny  that  gentlemen  skilful  at  cricket,  or 
strong  in  a  football  scuffle  against  the  wall,  denounced 
us  as  prigs,  nor  am  I  prepared  to  say  that  they  were 
altogether  wrong  in  that  decision.  But  after  all, 
priggishness  in  a  boy  is  not  necessarily  a  fatal  or 
permanent  defect,  and  even  the  grandest  of  leg-hitters 
gets  fat  and  slow  in  time.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
Debating  Society,  I  should  have  known  nothing  of 


ETON  FRIENDSHIPS  33 

Mr.  Gladstone,  or  of  my  beloved  friend  Arthur 
Hallam ;  Bruce,  afterwards  Lord  Elgin,  Wentworth 
who  became  the  elder  Lord  Milton  ;  the  future  Lord 
Canning,  Selwyn,  Pickering,  Sir  John  Hanmer, 
Gaskell,  and  many  others,  would  have  been  equally 
out  of  my  ken.  In  point  of  fact,  the  only  very 
intimate  friend  I  made  at  Eton,  independently  of  our 
Debating  Society,  was  James  Hope,  afterwards  the 
well-known  Parliamentary  advocate,  Hope  Scott.  He, 
luckily  for  me,  boarded  at  my  dame's.  In  my  case, 
these  intimacies  were  the  more  important  as  I  was  in 
a  great  measure  shut  out  from  games  and  the  oppor- 
tunities for  forming  friendships  at  games,  afforded  to 
other  boys.  For  cricket  I  was  too  blind ;  for  football 
incapacitated  by  an  injury  to  my  ankle,  which  I  had 
inflicted  on  myself  years  before,  in  trying  how  many 
steps  I  could  jump  down;  moreover  this  blindness 
and  lameness  combined  made  me  generally  awkward 
and  unenterprising.  I  could  scull  moderately  and 
swim  pretty  well,  but,  as  a  rule,  I  preferred  walking  to 
Slough,  Salt  Hill,  &c.  with  Hallam  or  Mr.  Gladstone, 
to  any  more  active  exercise  in  the  playing  fields  or  on 
the  river. 

In  the  Debating  Society  Mr.  Gladstone  soon  dis- 
tinguished himself.  Though  two  removes  below  him, 
the  members  of  this  oratorical  club,  irreverently 
called  Pop  by  outsiders,  through  some  accident  elected 
me  before  they  elected  him.  I  therefore  had  the 
privilege  of  listening  to  his  maiden  speech.  It  began, 
I  recollect,  with  these  words  :  '  Sir,  in  this  age  of 


34  MR.  GLADSTONE'S  MAIDEN  SPEECH 

increased  and  still  increasing  civilisation.'  This  phrase, 
falling  from  the  lips  of  a  boy  destined  to  play  so  im- 
portant a  part  in  the  history  of  his  country  and  his 
race,  gives  us  much  to  meditate,  and  something,  I 
think,  to  mourn  over.  Civilisation,  no  doubt,  has 
added  a  great  deal  to  the  comfort  of  the  well-to-do 
classes,  but  what  has  it  done  for  the  very  poor  ? 
Because  I  call  myself  a  Tory,  I  am  not  therefore  blind 
to  the  many  terrible  aspects  of  modern  life,  and  I  see, 
for  one  thing,  how  the  rapid  and  unorganised  over- 
growth of  a  populace,  which  this  so-called  civilisation 
has  mainly  dragged  into  being,  though  it  may  have 
increased  the  resources  of  the  capitalist,  though  it  may 
foster  trade  (as  if  the  souls  of  men  had  been  created 
to  be  always  interchanging  commodities,  and  for  no 
other  purpose  whatever),  has  nevertheless  impover- 
ished and  degraded  large  masses  of  my  fellow-country- 
men. I  find  it  difficult  not  to  suppose  that  the 
British  peasant  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  cen- 
turies, in  spite  of  his  rough  surroundings,  and  the 
fearful  hardships  he  was  often  forced  to  undergo,  yet 
filled  his  place  upon  earth  with  more  dignity  and 
satisfaction  than  the  majority  of  his  descendants. 
There  was  nothing,  if  I  have  eyes  in  my  head,  so  bad, 
nothing  to  make  one  so  much  ashamed  of  the  human 
race,  as  the  present  condition  of  our  great  cities,  with 
their  swarms  of  miserable  men,  women,  and  children, 
festering  in  poverty,  vice,  and  wretchedness,  who  are 
left  behind  by  this  boasted  civilisation  of  ours,  and 
are  likely  to  revenge  themselves  upon  it  at  no  great 


MY  REASONS  FOR  BEING  A  TORY  35 

distance  of  time.  I  am  a  Tory  because  history  is 
not  quite  hidden  from  me  ;  because  I  have  learnt  how 
'  the  master  of  those  who  know  '  taught  his  own,  and 
all  future  ages,  what  evils  democracy  passing  into 
ochlocracy  is  sure  to  bring  upon  its  victims.  I 
would  therefore  rather  adjourn  free  government  for  a 
time,  and  hand  over  the  management  of  affairs,  after 
the  Roman  fashion,  to  some  firm,  vigorous,  and 
patriotic  dictator,  if  we  could  only  find  him,  than 
encourage  a  huge  eyeless  Samson  to  drag  down  the 
pillars  which  sustain  what  is  left  of  our  social  edifice, 
on  the  chance  of  his  rebuilding  the  temple  of  human 
life  out  of  its  ruins,  with  more  consummate  skill,  and 
on  a  nobler  plan.  I  am  not  a  Tory,  alas,  because  I 
look  upon  the  present  state  of  things  with  approval, 
or  even  with  hope,  but  because  I  think  our  Govern- 
ment worse  than  it  was  sixty  years  ago,  and  because 
I  think  that  if  something  be  not  done  to  arrest  the 
growth  of  our  ever-increasing  population,  it  will  be 
worse  sixty  years  hence  than  it  is  now. 

To  proceed,  however.  After  Mr.  Gladstone's  ar- 
rival the  Debating  Society  doubled  and  trebled  itself  in 
point  of  numbers,  and  the  discussions  became  much 
fuller  of  interest  and  animation.  Hallarn  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  took  the  lead,  supported  by  Milnes  Gaskell 
and  others. 

Milnes  Gaskell,  afterwards  my  brother-in-law, 
was  a  very  curious  specimen  of  a  boy.  He  had  fed 
upon  politics  and  House  of  Commons  details  until 
he  became  a  sort  of  walking  Hansard.  By  some 


36  MILNES  GASKELL'S  CAREER  IN  LIFE 

process  best  known  to  himself,  he  had  got  acceptance 
from  the  various  door-keepers  as  a  sort  of  honorary 
M.P.,  and  slipped  about  the  holes  and  corners  of 
the  Parliamentary  buildings  with  at  least  the  tacit 
acquiescence  of  those  officials.  He  attended  whilst 
in  town  most  of  the  important  debates,  and  received 
a  good-natured  notice  from  Canning  and  many  other 
leading  members  whenever  they  met  him.  After- 
wards, his  close  friendship  with  the  late  Lord  Canning 
brought  him  into  more  constant  communication  with 
his  brilliant  father,  of  whom  he  has  preserved  in 
private  letters  many  interesting  anecdotes.  Some  of 
these  have  been  lately  given  to  the  world  by  Charles 
Milnes  Gaskell,  his  eldest  son.  He  knew  the  Parlia- 
mentary history  of  the  last  hundred  years  with  an 
absolute  knowledge,  and  could  recite  most  of  the 
great  speeches  with  marvellous  exactness,  and  he 
spoke  very  well,  in  spite  of  having  adopted  a  regular 
House  of  Commons  manner  which  was  not  entirely 
free  from  affectation.  His  after  career  was  scarcely 
as  successful  as  it  ought  to  have  been.  In  point  of 
fact,  he  was  too  rich  and  too  indolent  for  a  hard- 
working life,  so  indolent  indeed  as  to  shrink  from 
taking  any  real  physical  exercise.  A  great  pity,  as 
the  want  of  it  gradually  impaired  his  energies  and 
damaged  his  health.  Nay,  even  when  he  exercised 
his  intellect,  and  that  he  did  often  enough,  he  only 
exercised  it  as  he  chose,  and  never  would  do  any- 
thing except  what  he  liked  ;  he  therefore  never  filled 
his  mind  with  reading  enough,  or  braced  it  with 


MY  OWN  FAILURE  37 

thought  enough,  to  give  his  excellent  abilities  fair 
play.  Whenever  he  spoke  in  Parliament,  he  achieved  a 
decided  success,  but  he  was  too  apt  to  hug,  as  it  were, 
each  small  piece  of  that  success,  hesitating  to  risk  the 
parcel  of  reputation  he  had  just  gained  by  any  further 
efforts.  He  therefore  spoke  too  seldom  to  make  much 
impression  on  the  general  public,  though  as  a  private 
member  of  Parliament  and  able  worker  on  committees, 
the  other  hon.  members  held  him  in  high  esteem.  I 
hope  it  will  be  understood  that,  because  I  criticise  my 
brother-in-law,  I  do  not  therefore  take  up  my  position 
as  a  '  Sir  Oracle  '  against  whom  no (  dogs  are  to  bark,' 
or  claim  to  have  ordered  my  own  life  any  better  than 
he  has  done  his — far  from  it.  I  might  have  devoted 
myself  to  literature,  and  perhaps  created  something 
worth  the  world's  notice,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
might  have  given  up  my  mind  to  political  philosophy, 
practical  work,  and  effected  some  good  in  that  direc- 
tion. As  it  is,  from  the  want  of  a  certain  fixity  of 
purpose,  I  have  fallen  between  two  stools,  and  now  at 
the  age  of  seventy- six,  consider  myself  rather  a  poor 
creature.  Gaskell,  as  I  have  said,  spoke  seldom  in 
Parliament,  but  in  our  Debating  Society,  with  a  view 
to  perfect  himself  in  the  art,  he  was  always  speaking. 
Nay,  not  content  with  our  formal  meetings  at  Miss  Hat- 
ton's,  he  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  with  Canning,  I  believe, 
and  perhaps  one  or  two  others  (I  joined  their  party 
once  or  twice,  but  never  became  a  regular  attender) 
established  a  kind  of  inner  Debating  Society,  to  be 
held  on  certain  summer  afternoons  in  the  garden  of 


» 
38  MB.  GLADSTONE  IN  DANGER 

one  Trotman.  Now  Gaskell  was  a  proficient  in  all 
the  varieties  of  cheering — enthusiastic,  ironical,  crush- 
ing, &c.,  which  prevailed  at  St.  Stephen's.  In  this 
accomplishment  he  carefully  instructed  his  disciples. 

It  happened  that  my  tutor,  Mr.  Okes,  rented  a 
small  garden  near  to  Trotman's,  and  by  some  chance 
found  himself  there  on  the  occasion  of  one  of  these 
debates.  To  his  surprise,  he  heard  three  or  four 
boys  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall  sneering,  shouting, 
and  boo-hoo-ing  in  the  most  unaccountable  manner. 
There  seemed  but  one  conclusion  open  to  him  as  an 
experienced  Eton  tutor,  viz.  that  they  were  what  we 
at  the  Custom  House  used  somewhat  euphemistically 
to  call  { under  the  influence  of  liquor.'  He  there- 
fore summoned  Mr.  Gladstone  to  his  study,  listened 
gloomily  and  reluctantly  to  his  explanations  and  ex- 
cuses, and  all  but  handed  over  our  illustrious  Premier, 
with  his  subordinate  orators,  to  be  flogged  for  drunken- 
ness. 

Bruce,  afterwards  Lord  Elgin,  was  charmingly 
agreeable  in  conversation  ;  any  intercourse  with  him 
was  sure  to  give  pleasure.  Besides  this,  though  he 
may  not  have  equalled  Mr.  Gladstone  in  force  of 
character  and  general  ability,  he  realised  my  idea  of 
a  born  orator,  with  perhaps  the  single  exception  of 
Carlyle,  more  than  any  man  I  have  ever  met.  When- 
ever he  got  upon  his  legs,  something  not  existing  in 
his  mind  before  came  to  him,  as  it  seemed  from  with- 
out, and  his  powers  of  expression  grew  and  spread 
like  a  wind  suddenly  rising  as  the  speech  went  on. 


LORD  ELGIN  39 

If  ever  he  wrote  anything,  the  most  striking  parts  of 
his  essay  or  letter  were  just  faint  echoes  of  what 
he  would  have  said  much  better,  and  without  pre- 
meditation, as  an  extemporary  speaker.  His  career 
in  the  House  of  Commons  was  entirely  baffled  by 
the  unexpected  death  of  his  father,  a  Scotch  repre- 
sentative peer.  He  would  greatly  have  preferred 
to  keep  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Irish  peers,  had  it  been  pos- 
sible ;  but  though  he  grumbled  a  good  deal,  and 
even  talked  of  making  some  such  attempt,  he  must 
have  been  well  aware  all  the  time,  that  no  innovation 
of  the  kind  could  be  permitted.  Thus,  he  had  to 
retire  at  once.  Meanwhile,  the  Scotch  rules  of  suc- 
cession prevented  him  from  taking  his  father's  place 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  so  that  he  was  shut  out  from 
Parliament  altogether.  And  the  one  reward  he  ob- 
tained for  his  brilliant  success  at  starting  was  to  be 
sent  all  over  the  world,  from  one  colonial  government 
to  another,  without  getting  a  chance,  for  many  years 
at  least,  of  repeating  that  success  in  England.  His- 
brother  Frederick  once  told  me,  that,  in  a  speech 
addressed  to  a  mixed  assemblage  of  Americans  and 
Canadians,  he  so  touched  the  hearts  of  the  former, 
that  some  of  them  came  up  to  him,  probably  after 
dinner,  whilst  the  stimulus  of  Madame  Cliquot's 
magnums  was  uniting  itself  with  a  vivid  impression  of 
Lord  Elgin's  eloquence,  and  informed  him  that  if  he 
would  only  go  the  democratic  ticket,  they  would  put 
him  up  for  the  Presidency  the  very  next  time.  As,  I 


40  ARTHUR  IIALLAM 

believe,  no  one  unless  born  in  the  United  States  is 
eligible  for  that  particular  office,  there  is  a  touch  of 
froth  about  the  compliment,  suggesting,  as  I  hinted 
but  now,  a  previous  consumption  of  champagne  ; 
still,  even  with  that  drawback,  it  confirms  what  I 
said  above  as  to  his  natural  powers  of  oratory. 

And  now  what  shall  I  say  of  Arthur  Hallam  ? 
I  have  been  somewhat  taken  by  surprise,  though 
probably  without  sufficient  cause,  to  find  how  much 
of  his  memory  has  ceased  to  exist  for  the  younger 
men  who  sway  the  present  time.  He  has  remained 
so  vividly  before  all  of  us,  first  as  the  most  charming 
and  perhaps  the  most  promising  of  our  contemporaries, 
and  secondly,  as  the  hero  of  the  great  poem  '  In 
Memoriam,'  that  we  thought  his  name  an  imperishable 
one ;  but  a  poem  is  one  thing,  the  man  in  whose 
honour  it  is  written,  quite  another.  We  now  read 
'  Lycidas '  without  taking  any  great  interest  in  Mr. 
King,  and  those  who  come  after  us  may  go  on 
admiring  Tennyson's  verses,  without  dwelling  much 
on  the  image  of  Tennyson's  friend.  It  may  be  as 
well  therefore  to  give  a  short  account  of  him  here. 
He  was  the  eldest  son  of  the  well-known  historian 
Henry  Hallam,  and  he  died  suddenly  when  about 
one-and-twenty.  His  death  was  a  very  sad  one,  and 
has  left  behind  it  in  many  hearts  a  sorrow  not  to 
he  put  aside.  As  a  boy,  he  had  suffered  much  at 
intervals  from  serious  head-aches.  His  Eton  and  Cam- 
bridge friends,  naturally  enough,  thought  them  head- 
aches and  nothing  more,  but  when  the  end  came  it 


THE  AFFECTION  HE  INSPIRED  41 

was  made  clear  that  his  life  had  been  a  long  struggle 
against  incurable  organic  disease.  A  severe  bout  of 
influenza  weakened  him,  and  whilst  he  was  travelling 
abroad  for  change  of  air,  and  to  recover  his  strength, 
one  of  his  usual  attacks  apparently  returned  upon 
him  without  warning,  whilst  he  was  still  unfitted  to 
resist  it ;  so  that  when  his  poor  father  came  back 
from  a  walk  through  the  streets  of  Vienna,  he  was 
lying  dead  on  the  sofa  where  he  had  been  left  to  take 
a  short  rest.  Mr.  Hallam  sat  down  to  write  his 
letters,  and  it  was  only  by  slow  and  imperceptible 
degrees  that  a  certain  anxiety,  in  consequence  of 
Arthur's  stillness  and  silence,  dawned  upon  his  mind ; 
he  drew  near  to  ascertain  why  he  had  not  moved  nor 
spoken,  and  found  that  all  was  over.  A  son  of  Mr. 
Tennyson's,  though  born  many  years  after  he  left 
us,  has  been  called  Hallam,  and  a  son  of  mine  has 
been  called  Arthur.  It  seemed  as  if  neither  he  nor  I 
could  bear  to  let  the  name  pass  quite  away  from  us, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  same  thing  has  hap- 
pened in  many  other  families,  as  he  was  regarded  by 
all  who  knew  him  with  unusual  affection.  Even 
those  unacquainted  with  him  personally  must  regret 
that  he  was  prematurely  cut  off,  just  as  he  was 
gaining  the  mastery  over  a  deep  original  intellect, 
and  bringing  his  great  faculties  into  harmonious  com- 
bination. We  all  of  us,  even  Mr.  Gladstone,  I  think, 
felt  whilst  conversing  with  him,  that  we  were  in  the 
presence  of  a  larger,  profounder,  and  more  thoughtful 
mind  than  any  one  of  us  could  claim  for  himself. 


42          DEVELOPMENT  OF  HIS  FINE  INTELLECT 

But  his  very  depth  and  originality  rendered  it  more 
difficult  for  him  to  bring  his  ideas  to  the  surface, 
and  give  them  their  adequate  expression.  He  re- 
quired more  time  for  his  full  development  than  we 
did.  For  instance,  his  poems,  as  poems  of  promise, 
gave  greater  hopes  for  the  future  than  my  diluted 
Scott  and  water  or  Byron  and  water.  But  just 
because  they  were  his  own,  and  not  borrowed,  they 
seemed  (naturally  enough,  because  he  was  yet  but  a 
boy)  stiff  as  to  the  language,  and  imperfect  in  point 
of  form.  Before  he  died,  these  defects  had  almost 
disappeared,  or  at  any  rate  were  rapidly  disappearing ; 
I  would  particularly  mention  a  dramatic  scene  pre- 
served in  his  Remains,  between  the  painter  Raphael 
and  his  mistress  (the  Fornarina  she  was  called),  which 
strikes  me  as  not  only  beautifully  conceived,  but 
excellent  in  point  of  execution.  His  prose  writings 
were  vigorous  and  effective,  but  still  somewhat  want- 
ing in  ease,  grace,  and  lightness.  Here  again,  he  was 
moving  onward  with  rapid  strides.  In  proof  of  this 
I  may  refer  to  the  fine  analysis  of  Cicero's  character 
and  writings,  also  preserved  in  his  Remains.  This 
paper  was,  somehow  or  other,  connected  with  the 
Trinity  declamation  prize,  a  prize  which  he  won.  It 
was  not,  if  I  recollect  rightly,  the  victorious  essay 
itself,  but  a  sort  of  acknowledgment  to  the  College, 
expected  from  the  successful  candidate,  in  return  for 
his  medal  or  other  reward.  Still,  whatever  the  occa- 
sion of  its  being  written,  it  is  a  critical  and  philo- 
sophical dissertation  in  the  very  first  rank  of  such 


'IN  MEMORIAM'  43 

dissertations.  I  need  scarcely  add  that  his  temper 
was  so  charming  and  his  social  qualities  so  delightful, 
that  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  whether  we  admired 
or  loved  him  most.  I  have  thought  it  necessary  to 
say  thus  much  of  Arthur  Hallam,  though  perhaps 
it  may  seem  almost  impertinent  to  the  reader  of 
Tennyson's '  In  Memoriam '  to  speak  of  Arthur  Hallam 
at  all.  In  talking  of  Hallam's  literary  compositions, 
I  have  forgotten  to  say  how  they  first  appeared 
before  the  world  at  Eton.  He  was  one  of  the  chief 
supporters  of  the  Eton  Miscellany,  a  periodical  estab- 
lished and  conducted  by  us,  for  a  year,  under  Mr. 
Gladstone's  unfaltering  superintendence.  It  was  here 
that  I  first  came  out  as  a  poet ;  and  partly,  per- 
haps, because,  having  been  a  shorter  time  at  Eton 
than  most  of  my  companions  and  fellow-labourers, 
and  thence  comparatively  unknown,  I  took  the  school 
by  surprise,  I  obtained  more  credit  than  I  was  really 
entitled  to. 

It  is  true  that  Hallam,  from  whom  much  more 
had  been  expected,  did  not  quite  fulfil  those  expecta- 
tions ;  I  have  already  explained  why.  Had  he  lived, 
and  given  the  strength  of  his  mind  to  poetry,  I  feel 
quite  sure  that  he  would  have  beaten  me  easily  in  the 
long  run  ;  but  his  compositions,  though  full  of  promise 
to  a  discerning  eye,  were  at  the  moment  somewhat 
crude  and  immature,  so  that  the  preference  then  given 
to  me  over  him  was  not  wholly  unreasonable.  But 
there  was  another  friend  of  mine,  Sir  John,  afterwards 
Lord  Hamner,  whose  claims  to  hold  the  highest  place 


44  THE  LATE  LORD  HANMEK 

among  us  as  a  verse  writer  were  never,  I  think,  suffi- 
ciently considered.  The  ancients  used  to  worship 
Memory  as  the  mother  of  the  Muses ;  the  mother  of 
my  Muse  she  undoubtedly  was.  I  knew  quantities  of 
Byron  and  quantities  of  Scott  by  heart,  and  had  read 
the  older  poets  over  and  over  again,  so  that  verses 
came  to  me  abundantly  and  easily.  But  they  came 
quite  as  much  through  cisterns  filled  from  other 
sources  as  out  of  any  fountain  of  my  own.  Being, 
moreover,  a  half-blind  cockney,  I  derived  my  images 
from  books  instead  of  gathering  them  out  of  nature 
herself.  Now  Hanmer  was  not  a  cockney,  but  a 
Welshman;  he  lived  among  the  old  associations  of 
his  family,  and  from  the  traditions  of  his  native  place, 
and  from  the  Celtic  blood  in  his  veins,  was  urged 
to  write,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  by  a  lyrical  impulse 
more  decidedly  from  within  than  any  lyrical  impulse 
of  mine.  The  last  time  I  looked  into  the  Eton 
Miscellany,  I  thought  his  lines  on  the  Burial  of  Sir 
John  Elley's  Charger  finer  in  quality  than  any  of 
mine.  He  quarrelled  with  Selwyn  about  something 
or  other  before  the  magazine  had  been  long  on  foot, 
and  left  our  society,  so  that  he  contributed  but  little 
to  the  magnum  opus,  but  all  that  he  did  contribute  I 
thought  good,  nor  was  this  early  promise  of  his 
without  fruit.  He  cultivated  poetry  for  a  few  years, 
if  not  very  perseveringly  still  with  good  success,  till 
the  life  work  of  a  landed  proprietor  and  the  pressure 
of  Parliament  drew  him  away  from  literature.  He 
made  his  mark,  however,  to  this  extent.  Many  years 


SIR  HENRY  TAYLOR'S  POETS  45 

afterwards  my  friend  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  whose  critical 
faculties  are  well  known,  and  whose  sympathy  with 
the  talents  of  other  men  is  (was,  alas)  almost  un- 
equalled, pointed  out  to  me  those  whom  he  called 
his  four  unknown  but  real  contemporary  poets.  The 
first  of  these  was  Darley,  a  man  of  true  genius,  and 
not  of  poetical  genius  alone,  for  he  distinguished  him- 
self also  as  a  mathematician  and  as  a  man  of  science  ; 
the  second  was  Hanmer.  The  names  of  the  third  and 
fourth  have  escaped  me.  To  return  to  the  Miscellany ; 
it  went  on  its  way  in  spite  of  Hanmer's  defection,  in 
spite  also  of  the  fact  that  Hallam,  Selwyn,  and  other 
contributors  left  Eton  at  midsummer  (or  election  as 
we  used  to  call  it).  Mr.  Gladstone  and  I  remained 
behind  as  its  chief  supporters,  or  rather  it  would  be 
more  like  the  truth  if  I  said  that  Mr.  Gladstone  sup- 
ported the  whole  burden  upon  his  own  shoulders. 
I  was  unpunctual  and  unmethodical,  so  also  were  his 
other  vassals,  and  the  Miscellany  would  have  fallen 
to  the  ground  but  for  Mr.  Gladstone's  untiring  energy, 
pertinacity,  and  tact.  I  may  as  well  remark  here  that 
my  father,  a  man,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  of  great 
ability,  as  well  as  of  great  experience  in  life,  pre- 
dicted Mr.  Gladstone's  future  eminence  from  the 
manner  in  which  he  handled  this  somewhat  tiresome 
business.  k  It  is  not,'  he  remarked,  '  that  I  think  his 
papers  better  than  yours  or  Hallam' s — that  is  not 
my  meaning  at  all ;  but  the  force  of  character  he  has 
shown  in  managing  his  subordinates '  (insubordinates 
I  should  rather  call  them)  '  and  the  combination  of 


46  PRAED  AND  THE  'ETONIAN' 

ability  and  power  that  he  has  made  evident,  convince 
me  that  such  a  young  man  cannot  fail  to  distinguish 
himself  hereafter.'  (I  own  as  an  Englishman  that  I 
often  wish  my  father  had  not  been  quite  so  good  a 
prophet.)  As  to  the  Miscellany,  there  is  little  more  to 
be  said  about  it.  It  cemented  our  friendships,  helped  to 
fill  up  the  gaps  in  our  so-called  '  Eton  education,'  and, 
as  a  piece  of  writing,  was  not  discreditable  to  us,  who 
were  real  schoolboys.  As  a  literary  composition  its 
merits  were  not  equal  to  those  of  the  '  Etonian/  but  for 
that  there  were  several  sufficient  reasons.  In  the  first 
place,  Praed,  the  manager  of  the  '  Etonian,'  was  a  man 
of  genius,  and  his  genius  had  that  easy,  graceful,  and 
sparkling  character  which  exactly  fitted  him  for  the 
task  he  had  undertaken  ;  secondly,  though  called  the 
1  Etonian,'  a  great  part  of  its  contents  was  furnished 
by  ex-Eton  boys,  then  residing  at  Cambridge.  Now 
the  years  between  sixteen  and  nineteen,  or  seventeen 
and  twenty,  are  very  long  years  ;  and  an  under- 
graduate who  has  passed  five  or  six  terms  at  the 
university  ought  to  be  much  forwarder-  in  point  of 
acquirements,  intellectual  development,  and  produc- 
tive power,  than  a  fifth  form  boy  at  a  public  school ; 
and  this  the  Cambridge  undergraduates  proved  them- 
selves to  be  ;  lastly,  the  Miscellany  came  out  once  a 
fortnight,  the  '  Etonian '  only  once  a  month,  thus  the 
writers  in  the  earlier  work  were  enabled  to  give  more 
time  and  attention  to  their  productions  than  we  could. 
However,  at  the  end  of  1827,  the  Miscellany,  good  or 
bad,  came  to  an  end,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  and  I  went 


LEAVE  ETON  FOR  A   PRIVATE   TUTOR'S          47 

our  ways  to  different  private  tutors  before  settling 
ourselves  at  Oxford.  I  cannot  take  leave  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  Eton  career  without  recording  a  joke 
of  his,  which  even  at  this  distance  of  time  seems  cal- 
culated to  thrill  the  heart  of  Mid- Lothian  with  horror 
and  dismay.  He  was  then,  I  must  remind  my 
readers,  a  high  Tory,  and  used,  moreover,  to  criticise 
my  passion  for  the  turf,  to  chaff  me,  if  I  may  say  so 
without  irreverence,  for  the  interest  I  took  in  a  pursuit 
quite  uninteresting  to  him.  One  day  I  was  steadily 
computing  the  odds  for  the  Derby,  as  they  stood  in 
a  morning  newspaper.  He  leant  over  my  shoulder 
to  look  at  the  lot  of  horses  named.  Now  it  happened 
that  the  Duke  of  Graf  ton  owned  a  colt  called  Hamp- 
den,  who  figured  in  the  aforesaid  list.  '  Well/  cried 
Mr.  Gladstone,  reading  off  the  odds,  *  Hampden,  at 
any  rate,  I  see,  is  in  his  proper  place  between  Zeal 
and  Lunacy?  for  such,  in  truth,  was  the  position 
occupied  by  the  four-footed  namesake  of  that  illus- 
trious rebel.  But  oh,  ye  Schnadhorsts  and  Caucuses, 
what  an  utterance  to  fall  from  the  lips  of  the  idealised 
Liberal  and  coming  regenerator  of  mankind ! 

It  would  be  impossible  to  leave  Eton  behind  me 
without  just  mentioning  thatmra  avis  Dr.  Keate,  the 
rather  that  I  think  he  has  had  hard  measure  dealt  him 
in  some  recent  articles  by  a  certain  Mr.  Brinsley 
Richards,  and  still  more  because  the  obituarist  in  the 
'  Times  '  re-christened  him  Keats  the  other  day,  as  if 
instead  of  standing  out  as  the  stalwart  flogger  of 
ever  so  many  thousand  boys,  he  had  gone  in  for 


48  ETON    F.  RUGBY 

poetical  dreaming,  and  written  the  '  Ode  to  the  Night- 
ingale.' He  was  an  odd  and  imperfect  head-master 
no  doubt,  as  any  one  except  the  obituarist  would  have 
known  from  Kinglake's  world-famous  account  of  him, 
but  he  had  his  redeeming  points.  He  had  even  fine 
qualities  of  his  own,  and  was  at  the  worst  a  real  man, 
what  Carlyle  would  call  '  a  genuine  bit  of  thoroughly 
human  stuff.'  Like  all  the  rest  of  our  older  peda- 
gogues, he  has  been  overshadowed  and  banished  into 
darkness  by  the  widespread  renown  of  the  late 
Dr.  Arnold,  whose  avatar  is  supposed  to  have  en- 
tirely reorganised  English  public  education. 

That  there  was  much  to  admire  in  that  eminent 
personage,  no  one  will  dispute,  and  that  he  intro- 
duced new  elements  of  great  value  into  his  profes- 
sional work  is  equally  beyond  question ;  still,  as  I 
am  neither  a  Rugby  man  nor  a  Whig,  but  a  high  Tory 
and  an  Etonian,  I  may  perhaps  venture  to  point  out 
one  qualification  for  a  head-master  which  Keate  pos- 
sessed but  Arnold  did  not — I  mean  the  knowledge  of 
God  Almighty's  intention  that  there  should  exist  for 
a  certain  time,  between  childhood  and  manhood,  the 
natural  production  known  as  a  boy.  Every  sixth 
form  Rugbeian  was  bound  under  Arnold's  auspices 
to  come  of  age  in  his  teens,  and  to  wield  the  sceptre 
placed  by  the  great  head-master  in  his  hands,  with  a 
solemn  self-esteem  too  apt  to  degenerate  for  a  season 
into  priggish  self-importance.  As  you  encountered 
these  beardless  sages  marching  upon  the  university, 
the  notion  that  crossed  your  mind  inevitably  was,  that 


KEATE  AND  BOYS  49 

every  one  of  them  must  have  been  recently  rebaptized 
under  the  name  of  Theudas. 

That  Arnold's  class  of  august  hobbledehoys 
soon  unproved  itself  out  of  all  this,  and  has  done 
quite  as  well  as  any  other  class  of  men  in  after  years, 
cannot  be  doubted,  but  that  they  have  done  much 
better  I  have  yet  to  learn  ;  England  is  full  of  Eton 
men,  Winchester  men,  Harrow  men,  Charterhouse 
men,  Westminster  men,  &c.,  as  well  as  of  those  care- 
fully cultivated  products  from  Rugby,  and  I  am  not 
aware  that  you  can  draw  a  special  line  of  demarca- 
tion separating  any  one  of  these  public  schools — even 
Rugby — from  the  rest.  The  fact  is,  that  men  in 
general  are  obliged  to  finish  their  education  for  them- 
selves from  within,  and  though  carefully  applied  dis- 
cipline is  often  useful,  it  sometimes  works  after  an- 
other fashion,  and  produces  an  intemperate  reaction 
against  all  restraint.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  lesson 
taught  us  by  Terence's  comedy  of  the  '  Adelphi,'  to 
say  nothing  of  the  greater  drama  of  life. 

Now  though  Keate  was  not  good  at  manufactur- 
ing youthful  infallibilities  of  the  normal  Arnold  ian 
type,  he  was  perfectly  aware  that  boys  existed,  and 
that  they  always  must  be  boys,  not  manikins,  like  the 
little  Master  Laocoons.  He  was  rough  with  them,  I 
admit,  but  neither  unkind  nor  unjust  beneath  that 
roughness.  He  had  no  favourites,  and  flogged  the 
son  of  a  duke  and  the  son  of  a  grocer  with  perfect 
impartiality.  He  was  also  thoroughly  manly  and 
right-hearted  in  the  depths  of  his  nature.  I  have 


50  DEATH  OF  YOUNG  ASIILEY 

seldom  been  more  deeply  moved  than  I  was  by  the 
noble  address,  full  of  unshrinking  courage  and  stead- 
fastness, delivered  by  him  to  the  school  shortly  after 
the  sad  accident  by  which  young  Ashley  lost  his  life 
at  the  end  of  a  protracted  stand-up  fight  in  the  play- 
ing fields.  '  It  is  not/  he  said,  and  said  gallantly, 
'  that  I  object  to  fighting  in  itself;  on  the  contrary,  I 
like  to  see  a  boy  who  receives  a  blow  return  it  at  once, 
but  that  you,  the  heads  of  the  school,  should  allow  a 
contest  to  go  on  for  two  hours  and  a  half,  has  shocked 
and  grieved  me.'  He  then  proceeded  to  express  his 
sympathy  with  the  bereaved  parents,  in  a  strain  of 
genuine,  because  it  was  honest  eloquence,  and  to  urge 
upon  us  that  for  the  future  we  should  act  in  such 
cases  with  a  better  judgment,  and  under  a  deeper 
sense  of  responsibility.  One  and  all,  after  listening 
to  that  speech,  we  trooped  out  of  the  upper  school 
with  a  thorough  belief  and  confidence  in  Keate  that 
Arnold  himself  might  have  envied.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted, no  doubt,  that  when  the  higher  parts  of  his 
character  were  not  touched  and  roused,  he  often 
showed  himself  to  be  a  very  queer  creature  indeed. 
On  one  occasion  the  old  clock  in  the  school-yard,  a 
clock  very  prone  to  error  and  rapidly  approaching 
its  second  childhood,  chimed  three  quarters  when  it 
ousrht  to  have  chimed  two  o'clock,  all  those  who 

o  * 

hung  about  waiting  to  hear  the  hour  of  '  absence ' 
strike,  were  not  unnaturally  late  for  the  roll-call,  and 
thereupon  Keate's  indignation  at  having  the  same 
explanation  (a  perfectly  reasonable  one)  given  him 


KEATE'S  QUEERNESSES  51 

by  boy  after  boy,  swelled  into  a  perfect  hurricane  of 
real,  or  more  likely  of  seeming  rage.  One  of  the 
gusts  of  this  sham  fury  rushed  upon  me.  '  Clock, 
sir,  don't  talk  to  me  about  clocks ;  if  there  were  no 
clocks  you  would  be  bound  to  come  in  time  for 
absence  just  the  same.'  To  this  I  summoned  up  my 
courage  and  replied,  '  Yes,  sir,  if  there  were  no  clocks, 
but  there  is  a  clock.'  He  glared  at  me  for  a  moment 
without  speaking,  and  I  was  enabled  to  slip  away,  but 
only  to  hear,  as  I  went,  my  successor  thundered 
upon  with  equal  vehemence  for  repeating  the  one  un- 
avoidable excuse. 

I  was  talking  this  over  with  my  old  schoolfellow, 
the  present  Lord  Blachford,  many  years  afterwards, 
and  happened  to  observe  that  Keate  did  not  mind 
your  lying  to  him  ;  what  he  hated  was  a  monotony 
of  excuses.  '  Mind  your  lying  to  him/  retorted  Lord 
Blachford,  '  I  should  think  not ;  why,  he  exacted  it 
as  a  mark  of  proper  respect.  I  remember  getting 
into  some  trumpery  scrape,  and  when  called  upon 
for  my  explanations,  instead  of  making  the  shuffling 
statement  he  anticipated,  I  told  him  the  literal  truth  ; 
upon  which  he  at  once  inquired  of  me,  with  a  great 
appearance  of  anger,  whether  I  had  been  drinking.' 

Two  rather  amusing  scenes  connected  with  Keate 
return  to  my  memory,  and  I  may  as  well  set  down 
my  recollections  of  them.  There  was  in  our  time 
a  Cambridge  publication,  called  the  '  Museum  Criti- 
cum'  (Thirlwall's  famous  essay  on  the  Irony  of 
Sophocles  made  its  appearance  therein) ;  among 


52  HALLAM  AND  THE  'MUSEUM  CRITICUM ' 

other  things,  it  contained  a  considerable  number  of 
Latin  verses  —  poems  written  by  distinguished 
scholars  at  the  request  of  the  University,  to  give  a 
lift  to  successive  Commemorations.  We  used  to 
veneer  our  hexameters  by  digging  up,  and  then 
spreading  over  the  surface  of  our  exercises,  a  good 
line  or  a  happy  expression  out  of  these  poetical 
quarries.  On  one  occasion  Arthur  Hallam  had 
taken  rather  more  than  his  usual  allowance  from 
some  fine  lines  on  Deidarnia.  The  poem  was  signed 
R.  S.  e  Coll.  Trin.,  in  other  words,  Robert  or  Bobus 
Smith,  Sydney  Smith's  elder  brother,  who  as  a  Latin 
poet  is  perhaps  unequalled  among  modern  English- 
men. Arthur  Hallam,  placing  full  confidence  in  the 
signature,  helped  himself  as  I  have  said  somewhat 
freely,  and  his  verses  were  sent  up  for  good.  As 
soon,  however,  as  it  had  been  copied  out  and  placed 
irretrievably  in  Keate's  hands,  to  be  publicly  read 
over  in  due  time,  the  writer  lighted  upon  the  follow- 
ing apology  in  the  next  number  of  the  '  Museum 
Criticum.'  'We  have  to  apologise  to  the  distin- 
guished author  of  Deidamia.  Instead  of  R.  S.  e 
Coll.  Trin.  the  signature  should  have  been,  J.  K.  e 
Coll.  Reg.' — John  Keate  of  King's  College,  that  is  to 
say.  This  discovery  was  the  reverse  of  pleasant  to 
Arthur  Hallam,  still  there  was  nothing  for  it  but 
patient  expectation.  At  last  the  day  came,  and 
Keate  on  reading  the  poem  over,  played  with  his 
victim  as  a  cat  plays  with  a  mouse.  '  Ah,  that  line 
is  not  altogether  new  to  me  ;  that  paragraph  I  cer- 


I  DESCRIBE  THE  NILE  53 

.tainly  have  seen  before/  &c.  &c.  However,  the 
recitation  came  to  an  end — all  things  do — and  as 
the  thefts  were  really  of  no  importance,  like  the 
Law  —  de  minimis  non  curavit  Keatius.  On  the 
second  occasion  I  was  the  person  brought  into  con- 
tact with  the  doctor.  Under  some  Lawsonian  im- 
pulse, he  gave  us  as  the  verse  subject  for  the  week, 
apicrTov  juo>  vScy/3  (there  is  nothing  like  water).  Sir 
Wilfrid,  of  course,  had  he  been  a  contemporary  of 
ours,  would  have  revelled  in  such  an  opportunity  for 
airing,  or  rather,  for  opening  the  sluices  of  his  imagi- 
nation. But  I,  not  being  a  total  abstainer,  took  a 
different  view  of  the  matter,  and  did  not  fancy  my 
task.  After  a  time  it  occurred  to  me,  that  it  would 
be  rather  a  clever  evasion  if  I  described  the  whole 
course  of  the  Nile.  I  could  not  have  done  it  now. 
Accordingly,  I  started  with  that  ancient  river,  from 
his  mysterious  and  inaccessible  fountain  heads,  hur- 
ried him.  through  Abyssinia,  made  great  play  with 
the  hundred  gates  and  innumerable  chariots  of  Thebes, 
rebuilt  all  the  temples  of  Memphis,  and  glassed  them 
in  his  limpid  current.  Keate  read  the  lines  over, 
grumbling  a  little,  now  and  then,  at  passages  which 
were  not  of  the  water,  watery.  So  long,  however, 
as  I  kept  close  to  the  river  banks,  he  bore  with  me 
more  or  less  patiently,  but  when,  in  the  end,  I  stood 
out  to  sea,  boarded  the  French  ships,  and  proclaimed 
aloud  the  glory  of  England,  and  of  Nelson,  he  could 
stand  it  no  longer.  '  It  was  not,1  he  cried,  '  the  Battle 
of  the  Nile,  it  was  the  Battle  of  Aboukir  Bay.'  Still, 


64  KEATE  AND  SWING 

in  spite  of  Aboukir  Bay,  the  exercise  had  been  sent 
up  for  good,  and  there  was  an  end  of  the  matter. 
Keate  joked  so  seldom,  that  I  feel  all  the  more  bound, 
in  taking  leave  of  him,  to  repeat  a  witticism  of  his 
which  caused  great  amusement  at  the  time.  In  the 
days  when  '  Swing '  set  to  work  destroying,  in  the 
supposed  interests  of  the  labourer,  agricultural  ma- 
chinery, Keate  received  an  anonymous  letter,  threat- 
ening him,  unless  he  stopped  flogging,  to  set  fire  to 
his  premises.  Keate  read  the  letter  out  to  the  boys, 
and  went  on  thus.  ( This  is  all  nonsense ;  "  Swing  "  can 
have  no  complaint  against  me,  for  I  always  employ 
my  hands,  and  have  never  used  any  machinery  at 
all.'  So  for  a  long  farewell  to  Dr.  Keate,  who,  with 
all  his  faults,  was  an  able  and  honest  man. 

The  year  1825,  about  the  middle  of  my  Eton 
career,  was  remarkable  for  a  severe  commercial 
crisis.  The  Bank  of  England  itself  trembled  on  the 
edge  of  bankruptcy,  and  the  directors  gloomily  mur- 
mured that  they  might  be  driven  to  suspend  cash 
payments.  If  that  event  had  come  to  pass,  it  is 
difficult  to  estimate  the  amount  of  evil  which  must 
have  followed.  An  incident  happening  at  the  time 
shows  to  what  a  height  the  feverish  alarm  then 
prevailing  throughout  the  country  had  risen.  It  was 
freezing  hard,  and  an  old  woman  slipped  down  out- 
side the  door  of  Lubbock's  Bank,  and  broke  her  leg. 
Four  or  five  people  gathered  round  her,  to  give  what 
assistance  they  could.  And  in  consequence  a  rumour 
immediately  began  to  flit  about  the  Exchange,  that 


HOT  SOVEREIGNS  55 

a  run  upon  Lubbock's  Bank  had  started.  In  half  an 
hour  this  imaginary  run  became  a  real  one,  and 
though  the  firm  stood  as  solidly  as  Snowdon.  still 
the  having  to  realise  their  resources  without  delay,  at 
any  cost,  is  supposed  to  have  landed  the  partners  in 
a  loss  of  S0,000/. 

There  was  another  story  (a  more  comical  one)  of 
the  sharpness  shown  by  a  head  clerk  of  a  provincial 
bank,  I  rather  believe,  Leatham's  Bank,  at  Wakefield. 
All  its  customers,  on  a  certain  market  day,  were  crowd- 
ing round  the  counter,  clamorous  for  their  money. 
The  bullion  was  running  low,  and  things  looked  as 
black  as  possible,  when  this  expedient  suggested  itself 
to  the  man  of  whom  I  have  been  speaking.  He  put 
a  shovelful  of  sovereigns  into  the  fire,  and  after  a 
dexterous  readjustment,  poured  them  out  into  the 
hands  of  a  farmer,  who  had  eagerly  presented  his 
cheque.  The  man  started  back,  considerably  burnt 
about  the  fingers.  '  Good  God,  my  dear  sir,'  was  the 
explanation,  *  I  beg  you  ten  thousand  pardons ! 
In  my  hurry  I  forgot  to  warn  you,  but  we  have  to 
go  on  making  these  things  so  fast,  that  there  is  no 
time  to  let  them  cool.'  The  rustics,  according  to  the 
legend,  were  perfectly  satisfied  as  to  the  solvency 
of  the  firm,  and  the  run  stopped  itself  for  good  and 
all. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Holidays  mainly  spent  in  Yorkshire — Introduction  as  a  boy  to  Sydney 
Smith — Unfailing  flow  of  his  wit — Its  general  character — His  quo- 
tations— A  pun  of  his — A  pun  of  mine — The  reason  why  he  was 
not  made  a  Bishop — My  first  Derby — Virtue  its  own  reward — 
Lucky  escape  in  1827 — The  Doncaster  Cup  race — Other  noteworthy 
boys  at  Eton  with  me — George  Lewis — My  mission  into  Yorkshire 
and  Northumberland — The  Selwyns — Frederick  Tennyson — Wel- 
lesley,  afterwards  Dean  of  Windsor — Alexander  Leith — Monsieur 
Hamon — How  he  earned  a  ring — Lord  Dalmeny's  black  eye — The 
officers  of  the  Coldstream  Guards  who  fell  at  Inkerman. 

OF  course  there  were  holidays  spent  elsewhere  than  at 
Eton.  My  readers,  if  I  have  any,  must  recollect  that 
life  then,  and  life  now,  were  two  very  different  things. 
The  gloomy  streets  of  London  at  night  were  turned 
into  '  darkness  visible '  by  twinkling  oil-lamps. 
There  were  no  policemen,  only  wooden  old  watchmen, 
crying  out  the  hours,  so  as  to  give  thieves  and  bur- 
glars an  opportunity  of  dropping  their  profession  for  a 
few  minutes  if  they  thought  it  worth  while,  to  resume 
it  when  the  self-announcing  functionary  with  his  rattle 
had  retired  into  his  box.  There  were,  moreover,  no  rail- 
roads, and  travelling  cost  much  more.  The  result  of 
these  things  was,  even  in  my  youth,  and  still  more  so  hi 
the  first  years  of  the  century,  that  as  you  could  not  ac- 
complish much  by  hurrying  and  fussing  about,  time 
seemed  of  less  importance.  To  leave  London,  for  in- 


LIFE  EARLY  IN  THE  CENTURY  57 

stance,  was  a  much  more  solemn  and  serious  under- 
taking than  it  is  now.  Nobody  rushed  into  Yorkshire 
or  Northumberland,  still  less  into  Scotland  and  back, 
within  the  week,  for  a  battue  or  a  ball.  You  left 
London  once  during  the  year,  and  went  to  stay  with 
your  friends  and  relations  for  six  weeks  or  two 
months,  according  to  previous  arrangements.  Your 
life  became  a  part  of  the  house-life,  and  you  yourself 
a  member  of  the  family  for  the  time  being.  In  many 
respects  this  was  a  pleasanter  system  than  the  one 
which  now  prevails.  No  one  was  harassed  or  pushed 
away  from  one  place  to  another,  as  is  the  case  at 
present.  I  found  a  home  during  the  holidays,  as  a 
rule,  with  my  uncle  at  Nunappleton.  His  wife,  Lady 
Milner,  was  fond  of  me,  and  I  lived  with  my  cousins, 
girls  and  boys,  on  terms  of  the  closest  affection. 
During  one  of  these  holiday  visits,  I  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  introduced  to  Sydney  Smith ;  he  had 
come  over  as  a  guest  from  his  rectory,  situated  some- 
where beyond  York  (the  same  rectory  which  he 
describes  in  one  of  his  letters  as  being  geographically 
situated  eleven  miles  from  a  lemon).  He  stayed  at 
Nunappleton  a  few  days,  and  whilst  other  people 
went  out  hunting  or  shooting,  or  got  through  what- 
ever might  be  the  business  of  the  hour,  I  was  told 
off  to  walk  him  round  and  show  him  the  beauties  of 
one  of  the  ugliest  places  in  Yorkshire.  I  took  him 
to  the  gardens,  which  I  admit  had  great  merits,  so 
far  as  peaches  and  apricots  were  concerned.  I 
marked  out  for  him  the  confluence  of  those  two 


58  SYDNEY  SMITH'S  FORMS  OF  WIT 

mighty  rivers,  the  Wharfe  and  the  Ouse.  I  showed 
him  the  great  oak,  in  the  home  wood  (poor  old  oak,  I 
have  not  seen  you  for  the  last  twenty  years,  and  doubt 
much  whether  I  shall  ever  see  you  again).  In  short, 
in  my  then  state  of  life,  I  did  the  duty  to  which  I 
had  been  called.  During  all  this  time,  he  kept  me 
roaring  with  laughter,  till  my  sides  ached  as  if  they 
were  about  to  split.  His  inevitable  and  irresistible 
flood  of  fun  rolled  over  me  like  a  cataract,  never 
ceasing,  never  slackening,  never  varying  its  pace  for 
an  instant.  Most  of  these  conversations,  as  is  the 
case  with  all  the  finest  and  wittiest  talk,  have  effer- 
vesced away  for  ever.  Like  champagne,  the  brightest 
iridescences  of  wit  depend  upon  the  surrounding 
atmosphere,  and  cease  to  shine  when  they  cease  to 
reflect  its  immediate  influence.  Still  I  have  carried 
away  from  that  conversation,  or  rather  oneversation — 
for,  as  may  be  supposed,  •!  was  listening  too  eagerly  to 
say  much  myself — a  valuable  specimen  of  the  man,  in 
the  shape  of  a  brilliant  pun.  This  is  valuable,  like 
other  things,  partly  on  account  of  its  rarity,  and  there- 
fore very  valuable,  for  he  hardly  ever  condescended  to 
that  inferior  form  of  jocoseness.1  As  for  Sydney  Smith, 
he  was  great  in  many  ways,  in  repartee,  in  quotation, 
in  easy  banter,  but  his  typical  form  of  wit  was  a  fanciful 
form.  He  fixed  before  you  a  scene  or  situation  in 
some  picturesque  or  original  grotesqueness,  and  then 

1  Though,  when  a  pun  is  not  merely  a  pun,  but  also  flavoured  with  a 
Bpice  of  humour,  I  think  better  of  it  than  Addison  did,  whose  wit 
probably  belonged  to  his  pen  rather  than  to  his  tongue. 


HIS  'QUOTATIONS  59 

took  your  breath  away  by  his  ludicrous  exaggerations. 
As  for  instance,  when  he  lamented  the  successful  in- 
trusion of  the  Methodists  into  ordinary  life,  and  then 
compared  their  victims  to  the  Puritans  on  the  watch 
against  Claverhouse  and  Dalziel.  '  I  shall  live,'  he 
said,  '  to  see  four  elderly  gentlemen  playing  at  long 
whist  on  the  hills,  with  scouts  on  the  look-out  for 
dragoons.'  Again,  when  a  scandalised  fop  pointed 
out,  with  a  grimace  of  disgust,  a  straw  on  the  carpet 
of  a  drawing-room  filled  with  people  of  fashion, 
thereby  implying  that  some  unworthy  plebeian  had 
driven  to  the  door  in  a  hackney  coach,  this,  as  we 
all  know,  was  Sydney  Smith's  rejoinder:  *  God  bless 
my  soul,  do  you  care  about  that  ?  Why,  I  was  at  a 
literary  soiree  the  other  night,  where  the  carpet  was 
like  a  stubble  field.' 

Two  of  his  quotations  occur  to  me  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment.  They  were  well  known  once,  but  have 
probably  never  reached  the  ears  of  the  present  genera- 
tion ;  they  are  worth  recording  as  excellent  of  their 
kind,  and  also,  as  thoroughly  characteristic  of  the 
man.  First  comes  the  motto  which  he  proposed  to 
the  Scotchmen  around  him  when  they  established 
the  '  Edinburgh  Review.'  '  Tenui  musam  meditamur 
avena.'  '  We  cultivate  literature  on  a  little  oatmeal.' 
I  am  told  that  I  ought  to  apologise  for  repeating  a 
joke  so  familiar  to  many,  but  '  singula  de  nobis  anni 
prsedantur  euntes,'  and  it  is  not  unlikely  to  have 
dropped  into  practical  oblivion.  The  second  was  a 
wonderfully  happy  adaptation  of  a  passage  in  Virgil  to 


60  HIS  VIEW  OF  AMEEICAN  SLAVERY 

the  question  of  American  slavery.  In  talking  over  that 
subject  with  his  friend  Mr.  Everett,  Everett  observed 
in  a  tone  of  tender  self-pity,  that  we  in  England  did 
not  really  understand  the  matter,  and  could  not  feel  at 
our  distance  how  impossible  it  was  to  associate  with 
the  negroes,  they  smelt  so  abominably.  'Ah,'  re- 
torted Sydney  Smith,  without  a  moment's  hesitation, 
'At  si  non  alium  late  jactasset  odorem,  civis  erat' 
('  laurus  erat,'  is  Virgil's  expression) ;  '  that,  sir,  may 
be  a  reason  for  not  inviting  him  to  a  crowded  evening 
party,  but  it  is  no  reason  for  refusing  them  their  free- 
dom.' To  return,  however,  to  his  pun,  all  the  more 
valuable  as,  I  repeat,  I  never  heard  of  his  making 
another.1  '  My  friend  Tait/  he  began  (his  friend 
Tait  was  the  highly  distinguished  master  of  a  York- 
shire grammar  school),  '  sent  his  boy  over  to  spend  the 
day  with  my  boy ;  they  set  him  on  my  boy's  pony, 
and  the  pony  ran  away  with  him.  Oh  ho,  cried  I,  that 
is  what  our  lively  neighbours  call "  t^te-montee." '  l  My 
boy '  was  the  well-known  gentleman,  who,  according 
to  tradition,  on  being  told  by  his  father  that  he  really 
must  drop  his  horsey  talk,  and  suit  his  conversation 
to  the  Bishop  of  London,  destined  to  sit  next  him  at 
dinner,  showed  his  obedience  by  putting  this  question 
to  the  right  reverend  pontiff.  '  Pray,  Bishop,  how 

1  I  have  been  since  reminded,  that  when  a  young  man  of  fashion, 
trying  to  uphold  the  reputation  of  a  well-known  nobleman — accused 
of  cheating  at  play — exclaimed,  '  Well,  I  don't  care  what  they  say,  I 
have  just  left  a  card  upon  him.'  'Did  you  mark  it,  then?'  replied 
Sydney  Smith  ;  '  otherwise  he  will  not  take  it  as  an  honour.'  The  pun 
he  shot  out  upon  me  was  not  of  so  truculent  a  character. 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR  UP  FROM  GRASS  61 

long  do  you  think  it  took  Nebuchadnezzar  to  get  into 
condition  after  he  came  up  from  grass  ? '  He  was,  I 
fear,  not  a  very  satisfactory  son,  and  gave  his  father 
a  good  deal  of  uneasiness,  but  he  seems  to  have  in- 
herited a  good  share  of  that  father's  wit.  The  vener- 
able Lord  Lansdowne,  as  men,  I  hope  rightly,  used 
to  call  that  old  nobleman,  in  some  emergency,  under- 
took to  speak  to  him  seriously,  and  point  out  how 
necessary  it  had  become  that  he  should  drop  gambling, 
change  his  manner  of  life,  and  turn  out  a  respectable 
member  of  society.  Young  Smith  listened  in  silence 
till  his  monitor  had  finished,  and  then  jerked  out  this 
seemingly  irrelevant  inquiry.  'Lord  Lansdowne, 
do  you  know  how  Jones,  Lloyd,  and  Co.  made  all 
their  money  ?  '  '  No,'  replied  Lord  Lansdowne  in 
some  surprise.  '  Then  I  will  tell  you,'  explained 
Smith ;  '  by  minding  their  own  business.1 

I  am  here  tempted,  under  the  appearance  of 
Sydney  Smith  as  a  punster,  to  bring  to  life  a  pun  of 
my  own,  which  I  thought,  and  still  think,  taking  the 
circumstances  into  consideration,  a  good  one  of  its 
kind.  I,  the  only  civilian,  was  dining  at  the  Guards' 
mess  in  St.  James's  Street  a  few  days  after  the  town 
had  been  startled  by  a  tremendous  fire  at  the  Tower. 
The  Armoury,  with  its  thousands  of  various  weapons 
that  had  heaped  themselves  together  within  the  last 
three  hundred  years,  was  entirely  consumed.  In 
fact,  the  whole  range  of  buildings,  the  Record  Office, 
the  Barracks,  the  Church,  everything  that  fire  could 
reach,  had  run  the  greatest  danger  of  being  burnt  to 


62  SYDNEY  SMITH'S  DISAPPOINTMENT 

the  ground.  A  stalwart  Scotch  sergeant-major, 
equally  well  versed  in  his  duties  and  in  his  Bible, 
observed  in  the  hearing  of  his  officer,  as  he  and  his 
men  were  working  away  in  the  midst  of  that  over- 
whelming rush  of  heat :  '  Now  I  begin  to  understand 
how  the  flames  of  the  fire  slew  Nebuchadnezzar's 
soldiers  as  they  were  carrying  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and 
Abednego  to  the  burning  fiery  furnace.'  Upon  this 
there  ensued  a  good  deal  of  what  is  now  called  chaff- 
ing, and  a  gallant  captain  remarked,  'I  wonder  on  what 
principle  the  commander-in-chief  at  the  Nebuchad- 
nezzar Horse  Guards  selected  his  officers  for  that  very 
uncomfortable  duty.'  To  which  I  replied  at  once, 
'  Why,  what  is  more  obvious  ?  He  took  the  first 
upon  the  roster.1  This  joke,  coming  from  the  one 
non-soldier  of  the  party,  was  much,  and  though  I  say 
it  of  myself,  deservedly  applauded. 

But  to  return  to  Sydney  Smith,  of  whom  I  saw 
a  good  deal  afterwards  at  Baron  Parke's  and  else- 
where in  society.  He  was  a  very  striking  looking 
man,  with  a  countenance  indicating  great  intellectual 
power ;  a  countenance,  indeed,  which  might  have 
been  said  to  wear  a  thoughtful,  if  not  rather  a  stern 
expression  in  repose — only  that  it  never  was  in  re- 
pose. His  strength  of  mind,  firmness  of  purpose, 
and  great  general  ability,  ought,  no  doubt,  to  have 
earned  for  him  a  bishopric  from  the  Whigs,  but  un- 
luckily his  wit  lost  it  him.  The  chiefs  of  his  party 
had  not  courage  enough  (more  shame  to  them)  to 
place  so  unquenchable  a  live  firework  upon  the 


MY  FIRST  DERBY  63 

episcopal  bench,  though  nobody  who  knew  him 
ever  doubted  that  he  would  have  made  an  excellent 
bishop.  For  he  was  thoroughly  conscientious,  knew 
men,  and  understood  life  in  all  its  forms  and  varieties, 
and  was  rendered  indulgent,  both  to  high  and  low, 
by  the  softening  influence  of  humour,  as  well  as  by 
the  breadth  and  vigour  of  his  mind.  He  also  dis- 
tinguished himself  as  a  preacher,  but  that  as  a  quali- 
fication for  a  bishop,  whose  business  it  is  to  rule, 
guide,  and  organise,  seems  to  me  to  be  of  secondary 
importance. 

My  second  year,  1824,  was,  in  a  certain  sense, 
an  epoch  to  me.  On  June  4,  my  uncle,  Sir  William 
Milner,  took  me  to  see  my  first  Derby.  After  many 
years  of  ill  luck,  he  found  himself  the  owner  of  a  very 
fine  horse,  called  Osmond,  who  had  at  one  time  a 
great  chance  of  carrying  off  the  blue  ribbon  of  the 
turf.  But  alas,  some  time  before  the  race,  what 
trainers  call  the  distemper  got  hold  of  him,  and 
though  sufficiently  recovered  on  the  day  to  start,  he 
could  not  even  then  be  pronounced  quite  up  to  the 
mark  ;  he  was,  moreover,  ridden  about  as  ill  as  pos- 
sible. Furiously  pressed  up  the  hill  (where  he  ought 
to  have  been  tenderly  handled)  in  order  that  he  might 
catch  his  horses  after  a  wretched  get  off,  down  the 
hill,  just  where  his  great  stride  and  iron  legs  would 
have  enabled  him,  in  the  language  of  the  turf,  to  lose 
his  antagonists,  he  was  pulled  double,  that  his  jockey 
might  atone  for  his  first  mistake  by  falling  into  a 
second  and  still  worse  one  in  the  opposite  direction, 


64  SEARCH  AFTER  ME  AT  EPSOM 

something  after  the  manner  of  Charles  Lamb's 
sophistical  excuse  for  invariably  coming  so  late  to 
his  official  duties,  '  Yes,  I  do,  but  then  I  always  go 
away  so  early.'  The  result  was  that  up  the  final  rise, 
where  his  stride  told  less  and  his  recent  illness  more, 
Osmond  was  easily  beaten  by  a  colt  called  Cedric, 
and  had  to  content  himself  with  the  second  place. 
He  was  again  thoroughly  mismanaged  for  Doncaster, 
and  turned  into  a  complete  roarer  by  being  put 
into  a  damp  stable  at  the  beginning  of  the  St.  Leger 
week.  And  thus  he  passed  away,  like  other  horses 
and  other  men,  into  the  large  and  ever-increasing 
class  of  the  '  might  have  beens.'  The  Derby  being 
over,  I  walked  about  the  course,  endeavouring  to 
console  myself  for  my  disappointment,  a  disappoint- 
ment, by  the  way,  involving  the  loss  of  four  sove- 
reigns— rather  a  severe  blow  to  a  fifth  form  boy — by 
inspecting  the  humours  of  the  festival.  Now  I  was 
extremely  short-sighted,  it  was  true,  still  I  knew 
what  I  was  about,  and  had  taken  the  bearings  of  my 
uncle's  carriage  with  perfect  accuracy,  when  suddenly 
a  lugubrious  voice  fell  upon  my  ear  thus  : — *  Has — 
anybody — seen — a  young  gentleman — about  fourteen 
— in  a  blue  jacket,  white  trousers?'  &c.  I  might 
have  been  caught,  but  '  me  servavit  Apollo ; '  under 
his  divine  impulse  the  terrible  truth  flashed  upon 
me  at  once  ;  my  nervous  old  aunt,  thinking  me, — ME, 
an  ETON  FIFTH  FORM  BOY — helpless  and  lost,  had 
pressed  into  her  service  an  unfortunate  but  thoroughly 
conscientious  young  man.  In  his  benevolence  he 


ACCIDENT  TO  ME  IN  1827  65 

undertook  to  find  me,  and  kept  on  performing  his 
duty  nobly,  though  dismally,  in  the  face  of  a  pro- 
foundly indifferent  universe.  I  ought,  perhaps,  to  have 
thrown  myself  into  his  arms,  but  I  did  not ;  on  the 
contrary,  I  hid  myself  behind  a  carriage  till  he  had 

passed  by,  and  d d  my  old  aunt  with  right  good 

will.  If  I  could  have  taken  his  likeness,  I  should 
have  been  glad  to  present  mankind  with  the  portrait, 
for  the  expression  of  his  face  was  worth  perpetuating. 
'  Melancholy  had  marked  him  for  her  own.'  I  cannot 
justify  myself,  I  know,  but  still  I  felt  a  wicked  satis- 
faction as  I  listened  to  his  despondent  cadences,  and 
chuckled  to  hear  '  Has  any — seen — gentleman — 
trousers?  '  &c.  gradually  dying  away  in  the  distance. 
Naturally  enough,  he  did  not  return  to  his  employer, 
so  that  I  can  only  hope  for  him  that  his  exceptional 
good  faifh  and  virtue,  to  which  I  can  bear  witness, 
was,  according  to  the  proverb,  its  own  reward. 

During  the  summer  holidays  of  1827,  I  met  with 
an  accident  which  might  well  have  been  a  fatal  one. 
As,  however,  I  escaped  without  any  real  injury,  I 
should  not  have  noticed  it  but  for  a  psychological 
reason.  In  the  September  of  that  year,  I  was  riding 
through  Wheatley  Park  with  an  Eton  friend,  Dick 
Lumley,  the  present  (no,  now,  alas,  the  late)  Lord 
Scarborough.  We  rode  from  Sir  William  Cooke's 
house  to  see  the  St.  Leger  run  for — the  St.  Leger,  I 
mean,  won  by  Mr.  Petre's  Matilda — a  race  which  I 
afterwards  described  in  verse,  not  without  success. 
Two  Eton  boys  on  such  an  errand  naturally  began  to 


66  THOUGHT  IN  MOMENTS  OF  DANGER 

race  with  each  other  as  soon  as  they  could.  I  had 
been  mounted  upon  a  hot,  hard-mouthed  pony,  who 
could  not  be  stopped,  when  once  in  his  gallop,  under 
a  hundred  yards  at  least.  Having  taken  the  lead, 
instead  of  keeping  my  eyes  before  me,  I  continually 
looked  back  to  watch  Dick  Lumley's  progress,  wide 
on  the  right.  (He,  of  course,  was  doing  his  best  to 
overtake  me.)  Then,  happening  to  turn  round,  I 
saw  with  dismay  a  great  oak  across  my  path,  with  its 
boughs  stretching  away  on  both  sides  of  my  advance. 
What  was  to  be  done  ?  This  question  dashed  through 
my  mind — 'Shall  I  throw  myself  off?'  'No,' 
darted  up  the  answer,  '  I  will  take  my  feet  out  of  the 
stirrups,  and  give  way  to  the  blow  the  instant  it 
comes  upon  me.'  This,  accordingly,  I  did,  but  had 
to  wait  for  a  period  which  seemed  to  me  incompre- 
hensibly long,  showing  from  what  accuracy  of  obser- 
vation Shakespeare  speaks  when  he  tells  us  how  Time 
'  crawls,  trots,  or  gallops,'  according  to  the  circum- 
stances of  each  particular  case.  When  the  crisis 
arrived,  I  can  say,  without  any  doubt  or  hesitation,  that 
I  felt  the  rough  touch  of  the  bark  across  my  upper  lip 
before  I  felt  the  shock  which  threw  me  to  the  ground. 
The  two  impressions  were  perfectly  distinct.  This 
quickening  and  intensifying  of  the  processes  of  thought 
and  sensation  struck  me  greatly  at  the  time,  and 
afterwards  at  the  bar,  whenever  I  heard  counsel,  in 
defending  a  prisoner,  try  to  prove  how  confusion  of 
thought  and  an  overclouding  of  the  perceptive  facul- 
ties must  be  the  necessary  consequences  of  excite- 


THE  DONCASTER  ST.  LEGER  OF  1827  67 

ment  and  alarm,  they  did  not  convince  me.  I  be- 
lieve, and  always  have  believed,  that  in  many  cases 
the  opposite  results  might  safely  be  predicted.  My 
tumble,  in  the  end,  amounted  to  nothing.  I  rose 
from  the  ground,  little  the  worse,  though  Dick  Lumley 
rode  up,  crying  out  in  rather  a  reproachful  tone, 
*  Why,  I  thought  you  were  killed ! '  as  if  I  had  no 
business  to  get  off  so  cheaply.  He  honestly  rejoiced, 
I  have  no  doubt,  like  the  good-natured  fellow  he  was, 
at  my  unexpected  escape,  but  I  fancied  I  could  detect 
passing  through  his  mind  a  momentary  nicker  of 
something  like  disappointment,  that  he  had  not  to 
gallop  back  to  the  house  and  electrify  its  inmates  with 
the  melancholy  tidings  that  I  was  lying  a  corpse 
under  that  ill-omened  oak  tree.  However,  on  finding 
me  by  no  means  a  corpse,  he  made  the  best  of  it, 
helped  me  to  catch  my  pony,  and  we  then  rode  on,  to 
take  our  places  in  the  Doncaster  stand,  I  with  a  lump 
on  my  upper  lip  as  big  as  a  pigeon's  egg,  but  other- 
wise none  the  worse.  I  have  always  felt  glad  to  have 
been  able  to  go  on  my  own  way  after  what  had  happened, 
first,  because  '  The  Doncaster  St.  Leger,'  perhaps  my 
most  successful  poem,  would  otherwise  not  have  been 
written  ;  but  secondly,  and  still  more,  because,  had  I 
been  confined  to  the  house,  I  should  have  missed  one 
of  the  most  interesting  and  remarkable  races  of  the 
century.  There  is  but  one  other,  that  I  know  of,  fit 
to  be  brought  into  comparison  with  it — the  race  for 
the  Gold  Cup  at  Richmond,  in  1615,  won  by  Filho 
da  Puta. 


68  DONG  ASTER  CUP  RACE  OF  1827 

The  Doncaster  Cup  race  of  1827  was  a  race  such 
as  I  had  never  seen  before,  and  certainly  shall  never 
see  again.  The  best  horses  of  Great  Britain  met 
there  to  oppose  each  other ;  they  had  come  from 
every  part  of  the  kingdom  to  compete  for  that  highly 
valued  prize.  There  was  Fleur  de  Lis,  from  North- 
umberland, till  that  day  a  practically  invincible  mare, 
seeing  that  she  had  never  been  truly  and  fairly  beaten. 
There  was  Mr.  Watt's  famous  Memnon,  the  winner 
of  the  St.  Leger  in  1825.  There  was  Lord  Scar- 
borough's Tarrare,  who  had  been  successful  for  the 
same  stakes  in  1826.  After  him  came  Longwaist, 
the  best  of  the  South  Country  racers,  particularly 
over  a  long  course.  With  him  appeared  Actaeon, 
the  finest  and  stoutest  representative  of  Scotland ; 
and  Starch,  the  Irish  champion.  There  was  also 
Reviewer,  a  three-year-old  of  merit,  and  I  rather 
believe  a  second  three-year-old,  but  I  cannot  quite 
recollect  ;  besides  the  above,  there  was  Lord  Fitz- 
William's  Mulatto,  who  succeeded  in  defeating  these 
famous  antagonists,  one  and  all,  in  the  memorable 
struggle  I  am  about  to  describe.  The  Cup  course  at 
Doncaster,  as  must  be  well  known  to  those  who  take 
an  interest  in  such  matters,  is  two  miles  and  five 
furlongs  in  length.  For  this  race,  as  was  natural, 
Fleur  de  Lis  stood  out  as  first  favourite,  but  Nelson, 
the  jockey  who  had  so  often  ridden  her  to  victory, 
belonged  of  right  to  Lord  Scarborough,  the  owner  of 
Tarrare  ;  so  that  he  was  taken  away  from  the  mare 
and  she  had  a  strange  rider  put  upon  her  back. 


DEFEAT  OF  FLEUK  DE  LIS  69 

Being  of  a  difficult  temper  she  resented  the  intrud- 
ing hand  and  seat  of  this  interloper.  Accordingly, 
the  moment  the  horses  set  off  she  ran  away  with  him 
and  came  past  the  stand,  for  the  first  time,  at  least  a 
dozen  lengths  in  front  of  her  rivals.  The  others  fol- 
lowed in  a  body,  all  of  them  packed  closely  together, 
like  a  squadron  of  cavalry.  Soon  the  pace  grew  so 
terrible  that  this  close  order  could  not  be  mam- 
tamed  ;  a  hundred  yards  or  so  beyond  the  stand,  the 
two  three-year-olds  stopped  as  if  they  had  been  shot ; 
a  little  further  on  the  same  thing  happened  to  Starch, 
and  then  again  to  Tarrare.  Each  of  them,  with  a 
surrounding  of  his  constituents,  formed  a  little 
black  dot  in  the  distance,  and  moved  slowly  on 
across  the  course,  with  wide  spaces  intervening 
between  them,  as  they  respectively  walked  home. 
At  the  Red  House,  Actseon,  without  absolutely  stand- 
ing still,  dropped  away  from  the  leading  horses,  and 
in  a  moment  was  half  a  distance  in  the  rear.  Thus, 
as  they  approached  their  goal  only  four  out  of  the 
eight  or  nine  competitors  were  still  able  to  gallop. 
Fleur  de  Lis  as  yet  held  her  place  in  front,  but  the 
desperate  exertions  she  had  made  for  the  first  two 
miles  and  a  half,  and  the  long  struggle  with  her 
jockey,  who  had  striven  throughout  to  moderate  the 
pace,  exhausted  her  so  much  that  Mulatto  and 
Memnon  were  now  running  close  at  her  heels,  and 
her  most  sanguine  adherents  began  to  see  that  defeat 
was  at  hand.  Still,  when  passed  at  the  corner  of  the 
stand  by  Mulatto  and  Memnon,  she  would  not  yield 


70  NOTEWORTHY  ETON  BOYS 

without  a  struggle,  but  collaring  the  latter  on  the 
post  again  made  a  dead  heat  with  him.  for  the  second 
place  ;  Mulatto,  on  that  occasion  only,  was  too  much 
for  her,  and  won  by  about  half  a  length.  The  two 
miles  and  five  furlongs  were  accomplished,  according 
to  the  watches  of  1827,  in  four  minutes,  ten  or  eleven 
seconds. 

Taking  the  last  of  these  two  estimates  as  the 
correct  one,  the  pace  would  be  fast  enough  to  puzzle 
any  horse  of  the  present  day,  if  he  tried  to  perform 
that  distance  at  racing  speed,  a  feat  which  his  trainer 
is  much  too  wise  to  let  him  attempt.  Longwaist, 
the  fourth  horse,  was  some  twenty  lengths  behind, 
outstridden  and  overpaced,  but  invincible  in  point 
of  mettle  and  staying  power.  Altogether,  the  whole 
character  of  this  race  was  unique,  and  I  at  any  rate 
never  saw  so  many  good  horses  matched  against  one 
another  with  such  a  result. 

It  is  perhaps  unadvisable  to  take  leave  of  Eton 
without  saying  a  word  or  two  about  some  older 
worthies,  technically  my  contemporaries,  though 
practically,  except  as  a  lower  boy  and  a  fag,  I 
had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  them.  George 
Lewis,  the  well-known  statesman  and  philosophical 
inquirer,  boarded  at  my  dame's.  He  was  high  up 
in  the  school  when  I  first  made  my  appearance  at 
Mrs.  Holt's  ;  I  knew  and  admired  him  afterwards, 
but  except  by  laying  his  breakfast  things,  and  occa- 
sionally lighting  his  fire  (offices  which  I  performed 
exceptionally  ill),  I  had  little  or  no  communica- 


GEORGE  LEWIS  71 

tion  with  him  at  that  time.  He  was  noted  at  Eton, 
and  subsequently  at  Oxford,  for  strong  good  sense 
and  great  logical  ability.  Hence  the  positions  he 
occupied,  when  older,  in  the  Ministry  and  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  seemed  only  his  due.  At  Eton 
he  figured  as  a  quiet,  good-natured  boy,  or  rather 
young  man,  for  he  never  was  much  of  a  boy,  more 
given  to  books  than  to  sports,  though  manly  and 
straightforward  in  character,  so  that  he  was  respected 
as  well  as  liked.  He  passed  on  from  Eton  to  Christ 
Church,  where  he  increased  his  reputation  and  ob- 
tained high  honours,  but  as  he  had  taken  his  degree- 
before  I  went  up  to  the  university,  we  were  not  even 
nominally  together  at  Oxford,  as  we  had  been  at 
Eton.  A  certain  number  of  years  after  this,  whilst 
head  of  the  Poor  Law  Board,  he  sent  me  into  York- 
shire  and  Northumberland  to  make  some  inquiries 
about  the  labour  of  women  and  children  in  those 
counties.  I  did  my  best  for  him,  and  forwarded  my 
report  to  the  proper  quarter.  On  my  return  to  townr 
however,  when  the  question  of  remuneration  arose,  a 
slight  difference  of  opinion  started  up  between  me 
and  the  Treasury  officials.  This  difference  of  opinion 
remains  unsettled,  theoretically  at  least,  to  the  pre- 
sent hour.  Fifty  pounds  was  my  fee  for  five  weeks'" 
hardish  work  ;  from  this  fifty  pounds,  the  high- 
minded  economists  of  Downing  Street  deducted  the 
income  tax.  I  did  not  think  this  a  magnificent  pro- 
ceeding, still  I  had  no  valid  objection  to  make,  and 
acquiesced  as  a  matter  of  course.  But  there  was  yet 

6 


72  THE  MISFORTUNE  OF  HIS  DEATH 

another  question  behind  ;  forty  pounds  or  so  had 
been  paid  by  me  for  gigs,  hotel  bills,  and  other 
sundries,  and  when  the  acting  functionary  handed  me 
over  a  cheque  from  Government  in  discharge  of  this 
sum,  he  proposed  once  more  to  bring  his  income  tax 
deduction  into  play.  '  No,'  said  I,  '  that  cannot  be  ; 
to  purchase  these  things,  I  advanced  money  to  you, 
money  of  my  own,  which  had  already  paid  its  share 
of  the  income  tax.  You  must  not  saddle  me  with 
that  impost  twice  over.'  They  did  not  absolutely 
refuse  to  discuss  the  matter  from  this  point  of  view, 
but  quibbled  and  procrastinated,  till  after  having 
attacked  the  Treasury  three  times,  without  effecting 
a  lodgment,  I  raised  the  siege.  I  found  indeed  that  I 
should  probably  lose  more  in  cabs  and  shoe  leather 
than  the  capital  sum  under  discussion ;  I  therefore 
shook  the  dust  off  my  feet  at  them,  happy  to  secure, 
instead  of  the  sum  due  to  me,  a  grievance  for  life 
at  the  cost  of  a  few  shillings. 

If  George  Lewis  had  taken  care  of  himself  he 
might  possibly  have  been  alive  now,1  but  he  was  of 
a  sceptical  turn  of  mind,  and  even  disbelieved  in  what 
is  the  centre  of  truth  to  so  many,  his  own  country 
doctor.  Hence,  an  illness,  I  believe  easily  curable  at 
first,  rapidly  got  worse,  and  no  one  attended  to  it,  till 
too  late.  And  so  he  died  prematurely.  His  loss  has 
been  a  very  great  one,  and  we  feel  it  more  and  more 
every  day,  for  he  stands  out  as  one  of  those  honest 
and  independent  Liberals,  whose  political  fibre  was 

1  This  was  written  some  years  ago. 


WILLIAM  SELWYN  73 

not  relaxed  by  his  constantly  feeding  himself  upon 
sentimental  platitudes.  He  really  loved  his  native 
land  better  than  his  party  or  his  own  personal  inte- 
rests, so  that  whenever  a  duty  to  England  showed 
itself  before  him,  he  might  safely  have  been  depended 
upon.  He  also  belonged  to  that  class  of  statesmen 
who  grow  wiser  with  advancing  years,  instead  of 
allowing  passions  and  fancies,  proper  enough  com- 
panions for  one's  youth,  to  inflame  themselves  more 
and  more  as  life  goes  on,  like  chariot  wheels  which 
get  hot  with  driving ;  at  the  same  time,  from  a  Liberal 
point  of  view,  he  was  not  open  to  the  imputation  of 
Toryism,  or  of  indifference  to  the  welfare  of  the  people 
(a  charge  brought  by  the  ochlocrats  at  present  in 
power,  though  now  not  for  the  moment  in  office, 
against  us  Tories.  In  my  opinion  most  unjustly). 
Besides  George  Lewis,  there  are  several  such  men  in 
my  eye  of  whom  it  may  reasonably  be  said,  that  had 
they  been  spared  to  us,  they  would  not  have  followed 
their  leader  like  sheep  to  the  edge  of  the  precipice, 
bleating  forth  impotent  murmurs  under  their  breath 
in  society,  or  at  any  rate  to  private  friends,  but  never 
daring  to  think  or  act  for  themselves  in  any  public 
capacity.1 

Another  of  the  brilliant  boys,  a  long  way  above 
me  in  the  school,  was  William  Selwyn.  Though  far 
superior  as  a  scholar  and  a  Cambridge  Don  to  his 
brother  George,  he  had  I  suppose  less  force  of  cha- 

1  This,  again,  does  not  apply  in  the  same  degree  to  the  present 
state  of  parties. 


74  CHRISTOPHER  WORDSWORTH 

racter,  and  less  moral  energy.  At  any  rate  he  did 
not  attain  to  the  same  pre-eminence  among  his  con- 
temporaries afterwards,  but  remained  rather  as  he  had 
begun,  a  brilliant  schoolboy,  to  the  end  of  his  life. 
Mr.  Brinsley  Richards,  in  his  '  Seven  Years  at  Eton,' 
has  observed,  that  the  Selwyns  (two  or  three  of  them 
at  least)  were  the  most  distinguished  Etonians  of 
our  time.  Their  father  before  them,  by  the  way,  was 
senior  medallist  at  Cambridge,  and  this  may  have 
secured  to  them,  either  under  his  immediate  tuition 
or  at  least  under  his  skilled  superintendence,  better 
early  training  and  a  luckier  start  than  the  majority  of 
their  contemporaries  could  attain  to.  Of  the  four 
brothers,  the  third,  Selwyn  minimus  in  Eton  phrase- 
ology, was  by  many  considered  the  Coryphaeus  of  the 
family,  but  he  died  too  young  to  make  that  claim 
good.  It  was  William,  the  eldest,  who  carried  every- 
thing before  him  at  Cambridge.  He  flourished  as 
senior  classic,  senior  medallist,  university  scholar, 
and  took  a  high  place  among  the  wranglers  beside. 
He  was  also,  in  addition  to  these  honours,  the  winner 
of  numerous  poetical  prizes.  If  he  could  not  claim, 
like  Alderson  and  Kaye,  to  be  senior  wrangler  and 
senior  medallist  at  once,  his  successful  Greek  and 
Latin  poems,  as  evidences  of  fine  literary  taste,  may 
be  set  against  their  mathematical  degrees,  and  after 
all,  even  in  that  department  of  study,  he  came  out 
sixth  wrangler,  after,  I  may  add  with  a  note  of  admira- 
tion, having  been  brought  up  at  Eton ! !  His  great 
rival  at  the  university  was  Christopher  Wordsworth, 


PRIZE  ODE  TO  IPHIGENIA  75 

the  late  Bishop  of  Lincoln.  He  came  from  Win- 
chester, being,  I  think,  a  year  younger  than  Selwyn. 
There  was  a  contest  between  them  for  the  Latin  ode, 
subject  Iphigenia  ;  in  this  contest  Wordsworth  gained 
the  victory.  I  presume,  however,  that  the  judges 
were  not  unanimous,  as  the  university  authorities 
requested  Selwyn  to  publish  his  unsuccessful  com- 
position. If  I  had  been  consulted,  I  should,  as  I 
generally  do,  have  agreed  with  the  minority,  though 
I  admit,  of  course,  that  I  may  have  been  prejudiced 
against  the  non-Etonian.  Wordsworth  gives  us,  in 
very  good  alcaics,  a  straightforward  account  of  all 
that  happened  at  Troy. 

When  the  leaders  of  the  Danaans  basely  stained  their  altars 
with  the  life-blood  of  Iphianassa. 

To  Selwyn  (a  more  poetical  conception  I  think), 
there  suggested  itself  a  choral  dirge  of  the  virgin 
bridesmaids  who  had  accompanied  their  beloved  mis- 
tress from  Mycenae  to  her  imaginary  nuptials  with 
Achilles.  I  do  not  recollect  the  two  odes  in  detail,  so 
that  I  cannot  institute  a  formal  comparison  between 
them,  but  I  think  this  stanza  of  Selwyn's  finer  than 
anything  to  be  found  in  his  antagonist's  composition  : 

Quantus  erit  dolor, 
Quum  pro  jocosis  f  unera  nuptiis, 
Mcestseque  custodem  favillse 
Pro  doming  referemus  urnam. 

William  Selwyn  became  Dean  of  something  or  other, 
and  held,  I  think,  one  of  the  divinity  professorships 
at  Cambridge  for  a  time,  but  his  progress  through 


76  FREDERICK  TENNYSON 

life  was  noiseless,  and  somewhat  obscure,  at  least  for 
one  who  had  started  in  so  brilliant  a  manner.  Of 
the  late  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  his  rival,  I  should  not  pro- 
nounce obscurity  to  be  the  weak  point.  His  dispute 
with  the  Squarson,  as  Samuel  Wilberforce  would 
have  called  him,  Mr.  King,  about  racehorses,  and 
with  the  dissenting  minister  about  the  inscription  on 
a  tombstone,  brought  his  character  under  rather  too 
fierce  a  light. 

Frederick  Tennyson,  Alfred  Tennyson's  elder 
brother,  was  another  remarkable  Eton  boy  among 
my  senior  contemporaries.  Like  most  of  the  Tenny- 
sons,  though  full  of  genius,  his  genius  had  a  touch 
of  eccentricity  about  it.  Of  his  poetical  talent 
you  could  not  say  that  it  belonged  to  anybody  but 
himself;  still  it  seems  to  me  more  akin,  naturally 
more  akin,  to  that  of  the  Laureate,  in  spirit  and  in 
form,  than  the  talent  of  their  intermediate  brother 
Charles  ;  the  graceful  and  finished  compositions  of  the 
latter  writer  reminding  one  of  no  other  person  in  his 
own  family  or  out  of  it.  Frederick  Tennyson  for 
many  years  lived  abroad,  and  finally  married  an 
Italian  lady,  so  that  he  rather  separated  himself  from 
England  and  English  literature,  in  which  had  he 
chosen  to  work  with  a  steady  purpose,  he  would  no 
doubt  have  acquired  distinction.  At  Eton  he  was 
rather  a  silent  solitary  boy,  not  always  in  perfect 
harmony  with  Keate.  After  one  of  the  long  vaca- 
tions, he  did  not  make  his  appearance  until  three  or 
four  days  beyond  the  appointed  time.  Being  in  the 


HTS  GREEK  ODE  77 

sixth  form,  with  all  sixth  form  privileges,  and  being 
neither  an  unsteady  nor  a  dissipated  lad,  Keate  waited 
with  a  patience  unusual  for  him,  till  Tennyson 
thought  fit  to  offer  up  his  formal  excuse  for  hav- 
ing stayed  away,  but  no  excuse  came.  Keate,  boiling 
over  with  suppressed  rage,  at  length  summoned  the 
delinquent  to  explain  ;  but  no  explanation  was  forth- 
coming. Tennyson  listened  with  silent  indifference 
to  all  that  the  doctor  said.  It  was  not  till  Keate 
wound  up  his  harangue  as  follows — '  Go  home,  sir, 
go  home  to  your  dame's  ;  sit  down  and  write  to  your 
father  at  once,  and  tell  him  that  I  insist  on  his  for- 
warding to  me  a  written  excuse  for  your  non-appear- 
ance,' that  Tennyson  put  his  hand  into  his  pocket 
and  pulled  out  a  dirty  letter,  which  had  been  lurking 
there  since  his  return,  and  presented  the  document  to 
the  peppery  little  doctor.  Keate  stood  speechless 
with  wrath,  and  it  required  a  certain  interval  before 
he  found  himself  able  to  stutter  forth  his  fragmentary 
utterance — '  And  showing  such  a  temper  too.'  He 
was  also,  I  think,  pretty  constantly  in  hot  water  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  did  not  try  very 
steadily  for  honours,  though  he  gained  Brown's  medal 
for  a  very  fine  Greek  ode  on  the  Pyramids,  the  last 
cadence  of  which  has  stayed  in  my  ears  ever  since  : 
oXXu/xeVay  yap  a  \6a)V  e^aTroXetrat.1 

Wellesley,  the  late  Dean  of  Windsor,  was  also 
held  in  high  honour  as  a  distinguished  Etonian  of 
that  period.  Though  a  good  deal  older  than  myself, 

1  When  they  perish,  the  whole  world  around  will  perish  too. 


78  THE  LATE  DEAN  OF  WINDSOR 

he  was  nearer  to  me  than  Tennyson  and  the  others  I 
have  just  mentioned.  I  had,  therefore,  more  inter- 
course with  him  than  with  them.  We  were  both 
members  of  the  Debating  Society  together,  though 
only  for  a  short  time  ;  whenever  he  did  speak  there, 
he  spoke  very  well,  but  his  special  gift,  a  gift  derived, 
I  suppose,  from  his  uncle  Lord  Wellesley,  was  a  per- 
fect mastery  of  Latin  versification.  I  think  at  the 
time  of  his  leaving  Eton  he  ranked  higher  as  to  that 
accomplishment  than  any  one  else ;  the  opinion  of 
the  school  on  this  point  had  been  pretty  well  summed 
up  in  this  dictum,  which,  uttered  by  some  individual, 
was  generally  accepted  all  round.  '  Wellesley  says 
that  George  Selwyn  is  our  best  Latin  verse  writer, 
George  Selwyn  on  the  other  hand  picks  out  Wellesley, 
and  it  is  George  Selwyn  who  is  right/  Like  Tenny- 
son and  Selwyn,  Wellesley  passed  on  to  Cambridge, 
but  I  do  not  think  he  troubled  himself  to  read  for 
honours  there.  As  one  uncle,  Lord  Wellesley,  had 
been  famous  among  Oxonians,  and  the  great  Duke  of 
Wellington  afterwards  became  Chancellor  of  Oxford, 
I  do  not  know  why  the  parents  of  this  particular 
nephew  of  theirs  preferred  the  other  university. 

Among  other  memorable  figures  of  that  day  there 
was  Alexander  Leith,  a  man  of  magnificent  presence 
and  immense  physical  strength.  A  cousin  of  his, 
Sir  Henry  Fletcher,  I  think,  had  a  statue  made 
from  him  after  he  reached  manhood,  in  the  cha- 
racter of  the  modern  Hercules.  Barnard  and  Hand, 
succeeded  by  Dupuis,  Sievewright,  and  others,  were 


MONSIEUR  HAMON  79 

our  principal  cricketers  ;  Leith,  mentioned  above, 
Stannifortli,  and  Scale,  the  most  famous  oarsmen 
of  my  time.  I  heard  from  my  fencing-master,  M. 
Hamon,  who  seemed  to  be  well  acquainted  with 
him,  that  Leith,  by  continually  overdoing  himself 
in  the  pursuit  of  athletic  supremacy,  and  striving 
to  maintain  his  bodily  frame  at  the  highest  point 
of  physical  training  for  an  unusually  long  period, 
brought  on  inflammation  of  the  joints,  and  died  com- 
paratively young. 

Nothing  more  occurs  to  me  at  this  moment 
in  connection  with  Eton.  As,  however,  I  have 
mentioned  Hamon' s  name,  I  may  as  well  record  a 
curious  story  which  he  told  me  while  I  practised 
quart  and  tierce  under  his  directions.  Hamon  was 
a  very  agreeable  Frenchman,  who  understood  his 
business  perfectly  well,  but  he  had  a  touch  of  the 
Gascon  about  him,  so  I  content  myself  with  giving 
his  version  of  the  tale,  and  say  nothing  either  one 
way  or  the  other  as  to  its  exactness.  One  morning 
he  showed  me  a  very  handsome  ring,  I  forget  whether 
it  was  an  emerald  or  an  amethyst,  and  went  on  thus  : 
This  ring  has  just  been  presented  to  me  under  very 
singular  circumstances.  Some  little  time  back  a 
gentleman,  not  an  Englishman,  called  upon  me  in 
rather  an  anxious  temper.  He  had  involved  himself 
in  a  serious  quarrel  with  some  other  foreigner — a 
quarrel  so  serious  that  a  duel  to  end  only  with  the 
death  of  one  or  other  of  them  had  become  inevit- 
able. A  fortnight  had  been  allowed  to  the  duellists 


80  HOW  HE  GOT  HIS   RING 

for  the  purpose  of  arranging  their  affairs  and  provid- 
ing for  their  families.  Now  his  adversary  had  the 
reputation  of  being  a  skilled  swordsman,  whilst  he 
was  totally  uninstructed  in  the  use  of  arms.  This 
being  the  case,  he  had  recourse  to  Hamon  in  the  hope 
of  getting  some  instruction  during  the  intervening 
fortnight.  '  Teach  you  to  fence  in  a  fortnight,'  cried 
out  Hamon ;  '  that  is  all  nonsense.  I  could  do  nothing 
in  that  time  except  embarrassing,  and  practically 
extinguishing,  your  natural  strength  and  activity 
by  subjecting  you  to  formal  rules  of  which  you 
would  be  the  servant  and  not  the  master.  You  must 
set  about  learning  some  irregular  and  anomalous 
attack  with  the  foils  under  my  guidance  ;  you  must 
work  at  this  hour  after  hour  and  day  after  day.  It 
will  of  course  be  very  bad  fencing,  but  if,  as  is  pos- 
sible, it  takes  your  opponent,  accustomed  to  the  re- 
cognised system,  by  surprise,  it  will,  unless  I  am 
mistaken,  be  quite  good  enough  to  kill  him.'  Lessons 
were  given  from  this  point  of  view,  and  the  result 
turned  out  just  as  Hamon  had  prophesied.  The 
ignoramus  ran  the  artist  through  the  body,  and 
showed  his  gratitude  to  his  instructor  by  presenting 
him  with  the  ring  I  have  spoken  of. 

The  best  fencers  of  Hamon's  school  were  Lord 
Dalmeny  (Lord  Rosebery's  father)  and  Maynard  of 
the  Blues,  who  would  have  become  Lord  Maynard,  I 
believe,  had  he  not  died  before  his  father.  With  Lord 
Dalmeny,  who  was  more  than  a  match  for  me,  I  used 
to  fence  very  often,  and  hardly  ever  managed  to  touch 


LORD  DALMENY'S  BLACK  EYE  81 

him,  but  in  boxing,  having  longer  arms,  I  made  a  better 
fight  of  it.  On  one  unlucky  occasion  he  rushed  in  just 
as  I  hit  out  with  my  left,  and  lo  and  behold  he  acquired 
a  severe  black  eye,  of  that  peculiar  kind  known  to 
professional  pugilists  as  a  ( mouse.'  Now,  as  he  had 
to -attend  the  Queen's  ball  that  night,  there  was  a 
certain  awkwardness  in  this  disfigurement.  On  con- 
sulting experts,  however,  all  difficulties  vanished 
immediately.  We  were  conducted  to  the  shop  of  a 
neighbouring  virtuoso,  whose  business  consisted  in 
covering  over  black  eyes  with  a  delicate  flesh-coloured 
pigment  (a  branch  of  high  art  which  I  had  never 
heard  of  till  then,  but  possessing,  as  I  then  found  out, 
its  regular  professors,  and  at  least  as  well  established 
as  the  guild  of  Quatorziemes  at  Paris).  Dalmeny 
submitted  to  the  operation,  and  appeared  afterwards 
in  her  Majesty's  presence  literally  'as  fresh  as  paint/ 
A  much  more  painful  impression  attached  itself  to 
that  fencing- room  during  the  Crimean  War. 

It  happened  that  the  Coldstream  Guards  had  sud- 
denly taken  a  fancy  for  athletic  exercises  of  the  kind, 
and  a  dozen  high-spirited  handsome  young  gentle- 
men were  laughing  and  working  in  my  company  for 
some  months  under  Hamon's  superintendence  ;  but 
the  war  suddenly  broke  out,  and  when  I  took  up  the 
paper  recording  the  battle  of  Inkerman,  I  found  that 
the  Coldstream  Guards,  after  escaping  almost  un- 
scathed at  the  battle  of  the  Alma,  was  the  regiment 
that  suffered  the  most  on  that  terrible  5th  of  Novem- 
ber. One  familiar  name  after  another  rose  up  before 


82  INKERMAN 

my  eyes,  and  I  laid  down  the  paper  with  the  mourn- 
ful consciousness  that  the  members  of  'that  bright 
band/  all  but  one,  were  numbered  with  the  dead.  It 
was  long  before  I  could  harden  my  heart  sufficiently 
to  go  back  to  that  haunted  room.  I  have  had  to 
undergo  many  afflictions  in  life,  but  a  sadder  impres- 
sion than  this  has  seldom  fallen  upon  me. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Leaving  Eton — Go  to  a  private  tutor's — My  fellow  pupils — Meet  one 
of  them  afterwards  at  Rome — He  constitutes  himself  my  guide — 
Works  of  art  at  Rome — The  Minerva  Medica — The  dying  Gladiator 
—The  Faun  of  Praxiteles — Sir  Charles  Napier — Augustus'  villa — 
The  confessionals  at  St.  Peter's. 

AT  Christmas  1827,  I  left  Eton,  not  for  good,  for 
I  had  much  better  have  remained  another  year  pro- 
fiting by  Keate's  fine  scholarship,  in  the  sixth  form, 
but  at  any  rate  for  ever.  I  then  went  to  a  private 
tutor's,  the  rector  of  Greetham  in  Rutlandshire.  Mr. 
Baker,  the  rector,  was  a  very  good  man,  but  only  of 
moderate  ability  and  average  acquirements.  My  fel- 
low pupils  were  agreeable,  kind-hearted  lads,  and  by 
no  means  stupid.  Still  I  found  myself  hi  a  somewhat 
duller  atmosphere  than  that  of  the  Eton  Debating 
Society,  with  its  various  intellectual  excitements.  I 
got  nothing  very  stimulating  out  of  my  tutor's 
method  of  instruction  ;  the  consequence  was  that  I 
learnt  but  little,  unlearnt  a  good  deal  of  what  I  had 
acquired  at  Eton,  my  power  of  writing  Latin  verses 
well,  especially.  That  rusted  over  a  good  deal ;  in 
short,  I  came  away  from  the  place  a  good  deal 
stupider  in  myself  than  I  went  there,  and  by  hurry- 
ing from  Eton  as  I  did,  missed,  as  I  said  before,  my 
best  chance  of  improvement  under  Keate  in  the  sixth 


84  MEETING  SANSUM  AT  ROME 

form.  I  have  often  been  told  since,  that  the  last 
year  under  him  was  of  greater  value  to  a  boy  of  any 
cleverness  than  all  the  earlier  years  put  together, 
and  therefore  I  have  always  regretted  losing  that 
opportunity  when  it  lay  open  to  me.  Of  my  com- 
panions at  Greetham  Rectory,  I  never  met  but  one 
again,  a  man  called  Sansuin. 

In  the  year  1848  I  went  to  Rome  for  a  fortnight 
and  ran  up  against  him  in  the  colonnade  of  St. 
Peter's.  It  was  a  fortunate  meeting  for  me,  as 
Sansum,  having  married  a  foreigner,  had  continued 
to  live  mainly  abroad,  since  we  were  first  fellow 
Etonians,  and  secondly,  fellow  pupils  of  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Baker.  He  knew  his  Rome  thoroughly,  from 
corner  to  corner,  and  kindly  devoted  himself  to  show- 
ing me  everything  that  was  worth  looking  at,  in  the 
most  effective  manner  and  in  the  shortest  possible 
tune.  As  the  cicerone  from  whom  he  rescued  me, 
in  describing  the  cardinal  virtues,  had  identified 
Justice  with  the  virtue  of  Architecture,  because  she 
happened  to  hold  up  a  pair  of  compasses,  it  was, 
perhaps,  just  as  well  that  I  fell  into  the  hands 
of  a  more  capable  guide.  I  must  confess,  that  with 
Rome,  taken  as  a  whole,  I  was  somewhat  disap- 
pointed. The  Rome  of  Cicero,  of  Horace,  of  Virgil,  of 
Livy,  the  only  Rome  with  which  we  are  familiar,  has 
so  entirely  disappeared,  that  we  feel  as  it  were  in  an 
unknown  place  when  we  find  ourselves  among  the 
late  Emperors  predominating  there.  This,  of  course, 
does  not  apply  to  the  art  galleries,  nor  yet  to  the 


THE  MINERVA  MEDICA  85 

inside  of  St.  Peter's,  where  you  discover  what  is  left 
of  the  real  ancient  Rome  to  a  much  greater  extent  than 
among  her  nominal  ruins.  Returning  to  the  galleries, 
I  have  never  yet  seen  any  work  of  art  which  pro- 
duced so  powerful  an  impression  upon  my  mind  as 
the  Minerva  Medica,  a  marble  statue  of  the  goddess, 
magnificent  in  point  of  expression,  and  clothed 
with  a  solemn  overshadowing  divinity.  The  statue  I 
mean  is  one  armed  with  a  spear,  and  having  a  helmet 
on  her  head.  The  Apollo  Belvidere  might  perhaps 
have  aifected  me  even  more  powerfully,  but  then  I 
had  been  familiarised  with  him  before  in  all  sizes  and 
in  every  kind  of  material,  whereas  the  Minerva  was  a 
new  presence,  filling  me  with  wonder  as  well  as  with 
delight. 

The  other  pieces  of  sculpture  in  the  Vatican, 
which  I  remember  as  having  had  specially  pointed 
out  to  me,  were  first  the  bust  of  Demosthenes,  and 
also  the  Faun  of  Praxiteles.  There  is  a  legend 
attached  to  the  Faun,  lending  it  an  interest  indepen- 
dent of  its  artistic  merits.  It  seems  that  Praxiteles, 
besides  being  a  pure-blooded  Greek,  was  also  some- 
thing of  a  Bohemian,  and  had  promised  one  of  those 
'she  companions,'  then  in  fashion  at  Athens,  with 
whom  he  had  entangled  himself,  that  he  would  make 
her  a  present  of  any  statue  she  chose  to  fix  upon,  out 
of  those  that  were  collected  in  his  studio.  The  lady, 
after  the  manner  of  such  ladies,  was  anxious  not  to 
lose  this  opportunity  of  enriching  herself,  but  she 
was  at  the  same  time  doubtful  of  her  own  critical 


86  THE  DYING  GLADIATOR 

acumen.  Accordingly,  one  evening  whilst  he  was 
at  supper  with  her  alone,  a  slave,  carefully  bribed 
beforehand,  rushed  in  with  the  melancholy  news,  that 
the  buildings  occupied  by  Praxiteles  for  his  works 
were  in  flames.  He  jumped  up  at  once,  making 
hastily  for  the  door,  and  crying,  'For  God's  sake, 
help  me  to  save  my  Faun.'  Upon  this  the  brazen- 
faced hussy  burst  out  laughing,  and  stopped  his 
progress  with  these  words  :  '  Oh,  you  need  not  be 
alarmed,  all  your  statues  are  quite  safe  j  only  you 
will  be  good  enough,  according  to  your  promise,  to 
hand  that  Faun  over  to  me.' 

The  Dying  Gladiator,  as  he  is  called,  is  beautifully 
executed,  but  the  barbaric  type  of  face  lessened  my 
admiration  a  little.  On  showing,  however,  a  small 
bronze  copy  of  it  to  a  child  of  two  years  old,  he  was 
immediately  filled  with  the  deepest  sympathy  and 
began  stroking  the  figure,  murmuring  as  he  did  so, 
'  Poor  boy,  poor  boy,  oh,  poor  boy ! '  a  manner  of  re- 
cognising the  skill  shown  by  the  artist  in  depicting 
pain,  languor,  distress,  and  despair,  which,  had  he 
been  still  alive,  and  among  us,  must,  I  think,  have 
touched  him  as  a  compliment  worth'  having.  The 
funniest  thing  during  our  fortnight's  companionship 
was  that,  whether  we  were  drinking  from  the  foun- 
tain of  Egeria,  or  contemplating  the  tomb  of  Henry 
IX.  (Cardinal  York)  in  St.  Peter's,  or  standing  at 
the  base  of  Pompey's  statue,  where,  before  us,  Caesar 
himself  had  stood  and  fallen,  the  one  thing  that 
interested  Sansum,  the  one  historical  fact  he  cared  to 


SIR  CHARLES  NAPIER  87 

recall  and  discuss,  was  the  great  fight  in  the  Eton 
playing-fields  between  Stephen  Denison  and  Latham 
the  Colleger.  Nay,  what  seemed  to  me  funnier  still, 
many  years  afterwards,  when  I  was  dining  with 
General  Sir  Charles  Napier,  who  had  been  a  friend 
of  my  father's,  in  the  course  of  conversation  I  hap- 
pened to  mention  this  fact  laughingly,  as  I  am  now 
doing,  and  immediately  the  battle-loving  blood  of 
the  Napiers  began  to  tingle  in  the  veins  of  my  host. 
He  became  full  of  excitement,  rubbed  his  hands 
eagerly  together,  gnashed  his  teeth,  and  would  not 
be  satisfied  until  I  had  reported  to  him,  round  after 
round,  all  the  details,  as  far  as  I  could  remember 
them,  of  that  famous  schoolboy  combat. 

As  I  have  digressed  into  Rome,  I  may  as  well, 
before  taking  up  my  Oxford  career,  mention  a  curious 
incident  which  happened  to  my  youngest  sister,  Selina 
Ridgway,  whilst  she  was  spending  a  winter  there.  A 
picnic  organised  itself  to  go  and  overlook  excavations 
in  some  place  where,  according  to  an  old  tradition,  a 
villa  of  Augustus's  had  been  burnt  to  the  ground.  Her 
eyes  were  keen  as  mine  are  defective,  and  she  caught 
sight,  among  the  rubbish  thrown  up  into  the  air  by 
the  spades  at  work,  of  a  curious  looking  pebble.  Mark- 
ing where  it  fell,  she  went  and  picked  it  up,  carried 
it  with  her  to  London,  and  showing  it  some  time 
afterwards  at  Garrard's,  asked  the  foreman  what  it  was. 
He  examined  it  carefully,  and  replied,  '  Well,  we  need 
not  now  discuss  what  it  is,  what  it  was  must  have  been, 
I  should  say,  a  very  valuable  sardonyx,  but  you  or 
7 


88  THE  CONFESSIONALS  AT  ST.  PETER'S 

somebody  else  must  have  been  poking  it  between 
the  bars  of  the  grate.'  A  remarkable  confirmation  of 
the  legend  she  had  heard  whilst  on  the  spot.  What 
impressed  me  most  deeply  at  Rome,  more  even. than 
the  Catacombs,  was  a  thing  I  had  never  heard  of 
before.  I  mean  the  sublime  arrogance  and  uncom- 
promising self-assertion  of  the  Catholic  Church,  as 
shown  by  the  confessionals  in  St.  Peter's.  They 
embrace  the  whole  circuit  of  the  Cathedral,  each  of 
them  being  inscribed  with  its  own  words  of  gui- 
dance, l  Pro  lingua  Ethiopica,'  '  Pro  lingua  Arabica,' 
'  Pro  lingua  Abyssinica,'  '  Pro  lingua  Sinensi,'  '  Pro 
lingua  Japonica/  &c.  &c.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine 
a  bolder  or  grander  method  of  snubbing  all  men  with- 
out her  pale,  and  though  the  Rev.  Grimes  Wapshot, 
pace  the  late  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  might  denounce  it 
as  Popish  impudence,  I  could  not  help  admiring  the 
power  and  sweep  of  thought  of  which  it  gave  evi- 
dence, particularly  when,  on  inquiring  whether  these 
pretensions  were  real  pretensions,  or  only  put  for- 
ward to  gull  and  deceive  people,  I  was  assured  that 
they  were  perfectly  real,  and  that  if  you  went  to 
confess  in  the  tongue  of  Ethiopia,  though  you  might 
have  to  wait  an  hour  or  two  before  the  proper 
ecclesiastic  came,  come  he  would.  I  can  recall 
nothing  more  at  present  about  my  Roman  visit,  I 
thereiore  fall  back  upon  that  part  of  my  life  from 
which  I  diverged. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Pass  on  to  Christ  Church — New  friends — Political  changes  of  opinion 
since  then — Whether  I  was  prevented  from  changing  by  circum- 
stances— How  far  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  influenced  Mr.  Gladstone 
— My  tutor,  Mr.  Williams — Tiglath  Pileser  and  Sardanapalus — 
Lord  Bolingbroke — The  '  Electra '  of  Sophocles — Mr.  Jebb — Frede- 
rick Rogers,  since  Lord  Blachford — Mr.  Oldham  missing  the 
Greek  Iambic  prize  at  Oriel — Mr.  Gladstone's  abstinence  from 
the  Debating  Society  at  Oriel. 

AFTER  the  Christmas  vacation  of  1829,  I  went  up 
to  Christ  Church.  There  I  found  old  Eton  friends, 
and  sooner  or  later  made  others.  The  present  Sir 
Thomas  Acland,  then  the  highest  of  Tories,  now 
a  Home-ruler,  and  marching  shoulder  to  shoulder,  I 
suppose,  with  the  Parnellites,  under  the  orders  of  Mr. 
Herbert  Gladstone  (who  seems  at  present  to  fill  in 
England  something  like  the  place  occupied  by 
Themistocles'  little  boy  at  Athens),  Sidney  Herbert, 
Joseph  Anstice,  Henry  Seymer,  Robert  Phillimore, 
Wynell  Mayow,  and  others.  I  was  not  happy  at 
Oxford  as  I  had  been  at  Eton.  A  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility weighed  upon  me  ;  my  father  was  not 
at  all  well  off,  and  I  was  putting  him  to  an  expense 
he  could  ill  afford.  On  the  other  hand  I  had  a 
natural  talent  for  idleness,  and  tried  in  vain  to 
satisfy  my  conscience  by  a  continual  determination 
to  begin  on  the  very  next  Monday  a  career  unblam- 


90        POLITICAL  CHANGES  AMONG  MY  FRIENDS 

able  by  men  or  gods.  But  the  Mondays  came  and 
went  without  much  change,  and  my  self-reproaches 
increased  instead  of  diminishing  ;  whereas  at  Eton, 
on  the  other  hand,  I  took  things  as  I  found  them, 
was  quite  content  if  I  did  a  good  copy  of  verses,  and 
had  no  remorse  for  anything  except  a  false  quantity. 
I  have  just  noticed  above  Sir  Thomas  Acland's 
passage  from  Toryism  to  advanced  Parnellism  ;  the 
same  statement  would  very  likely  also  hold  good  of 
others  among  my  most  distinguished  contemporaries. 
These  changes  I  have  always  attributed  to  the  per- 
sonal influence  exercised  over  them,  through  his 
great  talents  and  powerful  character,  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, and  I  have  often  wondered  whether,  if  circum- 
stances had  not  shunted  me  into  the  Civil  Service, 
leaving  me  as  it  were  high  and  dry,  I  should  not 
have  accompanied  them  in  their  transit.  Had  I 
been  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  parliamentary  satellites, 
this  might  have  been  the  case.  No,  I  think  now  I 
can  say  that  it  would  not. 

From  another  point  of  view,  though  perhaps  the 
Caucuses  may  consider  me  impertinent,  if  not  blas- 
phemous, for  saying  so,  I  doubt  whether  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's present  position  is  not  in  some  degree  an 
accidental  one.  We  may  all  of  us  recollect  the  Irish 
soldiers  who  marched  up  to,  and  then  passed  a  stan- 
dard erected  by  William  III.  Some  regiments  moved 
to  the  right  hand,  others  to  the  left,  the  right  hand 
division  taking  service  under  Louis  XIV.,  the  other 
division  submitting  to  the  English  Government.  On 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  LORD  BEACONSFIELD       91 

their  first  separation  they  were  but  an  inch  or  two 
apart,  but  the  distance  gradually  widened  between 
them  till  they,  or  their  representatives,  met  face  to 
face  at  Fontenoy.  So,  after  the  death  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  Lord  Beaconsfield's  presence  established,  like 
that  standard,  a  line  of  demarcation  between  the  two 
portions  of  the  Tory  party.  Had  it  not  been  for  his 
being  fixed  across  their  path,  I  think  Mr.  Gladstone, 
Herbert,  and  the  other  Peelites  would  have  joined 
Lord  Derby  instead  of  becoming  Whigs.  And  if  so, 
as  Mr.  Gladstone  must  always  be  moving  on  in  one 
direction  or  another,  he  would  have  l  kept  to  the  left,' 
and  then  the  gulf  must  have  yawned,  not  between 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  Lord  Salisbury,  but  between  Mr. 
Gladstone  and  the  Caucus  leaders,  Schnadhorst, 
Illingworth,  and  Co.  Nor  would  Mr.  Gladstone's 
logic  have  been  in  fault  (when  is  it?)  or  failed  to 
justify  abundantly  the  course  he  had  chosen. 

My  tutor  at  Christ  Church  was  the  Rev.  John 
Williams.  In  those  days  you  matriculated  without 
any  previous  examination,  giving  in  your  adhesion  to 
the  thirty-nine  articles,  and  starting  off  at  once  from 
that  orthodox  position  into  complete  university  mem- 
bership. It  happened,  however,  to  be  raining  hard 
when  I  called  upon  Mr.  Williams  that  I  might  be  put 
through  the  necessary  forms  of  admission,  and  he 
began  to  examine  me,  simply  by  way  of  passing  the 
time.  I  construed  as  well  as  I  could  a  passage  from 
Herodotus,  and  then  a  chapter  of  Livy.  After  this 
the  Bible  was  brought  down  from  its  shelf,  and  he 


92  TIGLATH  PILESER 

asked  me  if  I  could  tell  him  the  Scripture  name  of 
that  well-known  Assyrian  king,  Sardanapalus.  As 
to  that  highly  important  fact,  I  was  absolutely  in  the 
dark,  but  I  recollected  Marshal  Souvaroff's  contempt 
for  any  one  who  replied  to  a  question,  'Je  ne  sais 
pas/  whatever  that  question  might  be,  and  the 
praise  bestowed  by  him  on  the  Swiss  gentleman  who 
told  him  that  just  at  that  moment  there  were  forty 
thousand,  three  hundred  and  twenty-nine  fishes  and 
a  half  in  the  Lake  of  Zurich  instead  of  professing 
a  natural  ignorance  on  the  subject.  *  Ha,  voila  un 
homme  ;  ce  n'est  pas  un  de  ces  messieurs  "  Je  ne  sais 
pas."  I  felt,  moreover,  that  the  whole  business  was 
a  farce,  and  any  answer  I  might  give  not  of  the 
smallest  importance,  sol  conjured  up  the  most  vigo- 
rous and  mouth-filling  title  that  occurred  to  me  and 
voted  without  hesitation  for  Tiglath  Pileser.  Now 
it  appears  that  Tiglath  Pileser,  who,  for  aught  I 
knew,  might  have  lived  five  hundred  years  before 
Sardanapalus,  or  five  hundred  after  him,  has  been 
identified  with  Arbaces,  the  rebel  who  usurped  his 
throne  after  putting  him  to  death.  Oddly  enough, 
the  other  day  I  met  with  a  passage  from  Boling- 
broke's  Letters  on  History  :  (  The  Scripture  takes  no 
notice  of  any  Assyrian  kingdom  till  just  before  pro- 
fane history  makes  that  Empire  to  end,  then  we  hear 
of  Phul  (the  real  Simon  Pure)  and  of  Tiglath  Pileser, 
who  was,  perhaps,  the  same  person.1  Had  I  happened 
to  be  aware  that  I  possessed  so  plausible  a  supporter, 
I  should  have  greatly  strengthened  my  case  j  even  as 


THE  'ELECTRA*  or  SOPHOCLES  93 

it  was,  the  arrow  that  I  had  shot  forth  at  a  venture 
was  so  nearly  hitting  the  bull's-eye,  that  my  tutor 
doubted  for  a  moment  whether  I  was  not  a  learned 
young  man,  with  original  views  of  his  own  about 
Scriptural  chronology,  and  with  solid  reasons  in  the 
rear  to  support  those  views.  Accordingly,  he  took 
down  one  book  after  another,  and  hunted  his  authori- 
ties up  like  a  bloodhound ;  he  then  turned  round  upon 
me,  with  an  appealing  air  :  *  Tiglath  Pileser,  Tiglath 
Pileser — are  you  quite  sure  ?  '  To  this  I  had  nothing 
to  say,  but,  '  No,  I  am  not  quite  sure,  but  such  is 
my  supposition.'  He  went  to  look  at  his  library 
shelves  again,  and  finally  decided  that  I  was  wrong, 
and  that  the  gentleman  in  question  was  known  to 
the  Jews  as  Pul,  or  Phul,  and  not  as  Tiglath  Pileser. 
This  decision  I  accepted  with  bland  acquiescence,, 
admitting  that  I  must  have  miscalculated  the 
number  of  years.  Whether  Bolingbroke  would  have 
surrendered  with  as  good  a  grace,  I  cannot  say.  In 
the  meantime,  the  rain  had  stopped,  and  we  went 
off  to  the  Vice  Chancellor's  together,  in  perfect  agree- 
ment about  the  Scriptural  name  of  Sardanapalus. 

Taking  leave  of  Tiglath  Pileser,  I  shall  refer  to  a  lec- 
ture given  by  the  same  Mr.  Williams  on  the  *  Electra ' 
of  Sophocles,  partly  because  what  happened  then  was 
rather  amusing,  but  mainly  because  I  wish  to  claim 
for  myself  priority  over  Mr.  Jebb,  who  pointed  out 
the  other  day  that  the  description  of  Orestes'  imagi- 
nary death  at  the  Pythian  games  was  probably 
founded  upon  a  real  event.  Accidents  on  our  own 


94  THE  CHARIOT  SMASH 

racecourses  are  common  enough,  but  if  Ormonde  and 
his  compeers  were  harnessed  to  Greek  dog-carts, 
the  sweep  round  Tattenham  corner  would  become  a 
serious  business  indeed.  Unless  my  recollections  of 
Pindar  fail  me,  on  one  occasion,  when  a  Sicilian  Fred 
Archer  steered  the  car  of  Hiero  (or  Thrasybulus  was 
it  ?  I  forget  which),  through  ruin  and  confusion  to 
victory,  forty  chariots  are  said  to  have  been  upset  and 
broken  to  pieces.  Whether  Sophocles  was  referring 
to  this  particular  catastrophe  is  open  to  question ; — I 
should  say  not,  as  his  field,  to  adopt  our  own  Turf 
phrase,  was  a  smaller  one,  and  Pindar  flourished  a 
good  while  before  him,  but  that  he  had  some  such  cata- 
strophe before  his  mind  when  he  put  his  description 
upon  the  stage,  I  have  never  doubted  for  a  moment ; 
and  this  belief  of  mine  I  always  proclaimed  at  Christ 
Church  to  those  who  took  an  interest  in  the  matter. 
My  reasons  for  assuming  the  general  smash,  as  re- 
corded by  Sophocles,  to  have  actually  taken  place, 
are  first,  that  by  recalling  to  his  audience  a  terrible 
but  picturesque  accident,  which  had  recently  im- 
pressed itself  upon  them  at  one  of  the  great  national 
festivals,  he  gives  an  emphasis  and  reality  to  his  verses 
which  otherwise  might  have  been  wanting  to  them, 
and  secondly,  that  as  Cyrene  was  not  in  existence 
until  long  after  the  epoch  of  Orestes,  it  would  have 
been  ridiculous  to  introduce  Cyrenaic  chariots  into  a 
drama  of  his  time,  unless  it  were  that,  as  Sophocles 
wished  to  put  before  the  spectators  what  they  had 
seen  for  themselves,  Cyrene  could  not  well  be  left  out. 


95 

In  his  day  the  wiry  little  barbs  from  Africa  had, 
I  fancy,  a  great  advantage  over  their  Thessalian  and 
Spartan  antagonists,  and  therefore  they  play  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  Electra  narrative,  just  as  they 
did,  I  feel  sure,  in  the  collision  from  which  that 
narrative  derived  itself. 

What  then  amused  me  and  my  fellow  lecturers, 
was  that  I  brought  my  racing  experience  to  bear 
upon  the  construing  of  a  sentence,  and  defied  Herman 
and  Elmsley  because,  in  spite  of  their  scholarship, 
they  had  blundered  about  a  matter  of  which  they 
knew  nothing.  Orestes  was  in  the  rear  vcrrepas 
eX<0v  TTOjXovs,  as  they  interpret  it,  because  his  horses 
were  inferior.  I  said  to  my  tutor,  '  No,  sir,  that  is 
not  right  ;  it  means  holding  his  horses  in  hand 
behind.  Don't  you  see  a  line  or  two  further  on  T<W 
re'Xei  TH'OTU'  (j>epa)v — "  putting  his  confidence  in  the 
end  " — in  other  words  what  we  call  making  a  waiting 
race  of  it.'  '  But,  Mr.  Doyle,'  was  the  answer,  l  that 
is  not  in  accordance  with  Herman's  views.'  '  I 
can't  help  that,  sir,'  came  from  me  in  reply  ;  '  Her- 
man, I  am  sure,  was  never  either  at  Doncaster  or 
at  Newmarket.'  The  undergraduates  around  me 
laughed  out,  and  there  was  nothing  left  for  my  tutor 
to  do  but  to  laugh  also  and  concede  the  point  in 
dispute. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  year  before  me  in  standing, 
which  was  unlucky  for  me  in  this  respect,  that  we 
had  not  to  attend  the  same  lectures,  and  were  there- 
fore always  engaged  in  different  books,  in  different 


96  MR.   GLADSTONE'S  FELLOW  STUDENTS 

pupil-rooms,  at  the  same  time.  With  each  other's 
formal  studies,  therefore,  we  had  little  or  nothing  to 
do.  My  recollection  is  that  he  and  Frederick  Rogers 
of  Oriel,  the  present  Lord  Blachford,  worked  together 
at  classics,  and  that  he  read  his  mathematics  for  the 
most  part  in  company  with  Henry  Denison,  a  well- 
known  Christ  Church  man,  not  the  Bishop  of 
Salisbury  by  any  means,  as  Mr.  Brinsley  Richards  in 
his  book  about  Eton  carelessly  asserts,  but  a  brother 
of  his,  younger  by  about  ten  years.  His  career,  one 
of  high  promise,  was  cut  short  by  a  terrible  accident 
in  Australia.  Being  thrown  from  his  horse,  he  all 
but  broke  his  neck,  and  although  he  survived  this 
accident  for  a  good  many  years,  he  became  paralysed, 
rendered  unfit  for  any  active  pursuit,  and  had,  we 
may  say,  to  leave  all  hope  behind  him.  This  unfor- 
tunate result  was  the  more  vividly  brought  before  his 
friends  inasmuch  as  it  was  merely  a  physical  result. 
Henry  Denison  was  still  Henry  Denison,  his  fine 
intellect  remaining  unimpaired  to  the  last,  so  that 
he  himself,  and  his  admirers,  were  continually  re- 
minded of  all  that  had  been  lost.  His  misfortunes 
indeed  brought  out  the  innate  nobleness  of  a  character 

o  % 

which  greatly  endeared  him  to  his  friends,  inspiring 
them  with  the  deepest  sympathy  and  the  most 
affectionate  respect.  He  had  been,  in  his  first  youth, 
a  sort  of  Admirable  Crichton  among  his  contempo- 
raries ;  a  first-rate  rider,  a  first-rate  shot,  an  excel- 
lent cricketer,  and  absolutely  the  first  amateur  tennis 
player  of  his  day.  To  these  bodily  gifts  he  added 


HENRY  DENISON  97 

thorough  scholarship  and  great  general  powers  of 
mind,  and  yet,  flung  down  as  he  was  from  the 
pinnacle  where  he  had  been  standing,  he  faced  the 
melancholy  reverse  with  a  courageous  cheerfulness 
and  magnanimity,  which  beforehand  I  should  have 
thought  impossible.  There  was  no  complaint  uttered, 
no  weakness  or  peevishness  shown  ;  he  accepted  what 
was  inevitable  with  manly  frankness,  and  sought  by 
cultivating  pleasant  intercourse  with  his  friends,  and 
following  up  such  intellectual  pursuits  as  were  still 
open  to  him,  to  '  deceive  the  burden  of  life,'  and  set 
an  example  to  others  of  patience  and  self-control 
more  easily  admired  than  followed. 

As  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  the  earlier  part  of  his 
undergraduateship  he  read  steadily,  and  did  not 
exert  himself  to  shine  as  a  speaker.  In  point  of  fact, 
he  did  not  attempt  to  distinguish  himself  in  the  De- 
bating Society  till  he  had  pretty  well  made  sure  of 
his  distinction  in  the  Schools.  Now  the  life  of  a 
reading  man  at  Oxford,  whether  his  name  be  Brown, 
Jones,  or  Gladstone,  is  monotonous  enough,  and  Mr. 
Gladstone's  habits  at  first  were  much  the  same  as 
those  of  other  men  with  the  like  objects  in  view.  I 
used  often  to  walk  with  him  in  the  afternoon,  but  I 
never  recollect  riding  or  boating  in  his  company,  and 
I  believe  that  he  was  seldom  diverted  from  his  normal 
constitutional,  between  two  and  five,  along  one  of  the 
Oxford  roads.  A  slip  of  the  tongue  which  he  once 
made  at  lecture  in  this  part  of  his  career  is  amusing 
enough,  but  there  is  nothing  characteristic  of  him 


98  THE  SENIOR  CENSOR 

about  it,  the  same  thing  might  have  happened  to  any- 
one else. 

In  the '  Trachiniae '  of  Sophocles,  the  Centaur  Nessus 
is  called  6  0njp  (the  monster),  and  why  Mr.  Gladstone 
could  not  construe  it  so  is  not  worth  inquiring  into  ; 
he  meant  to  put  it  into  English  as  the  Centaur,  but 
he  said  by  mistake,  Censor,  that  is,  he  called  his  tutor 
and  lecturer,  old  Vowler  Short,  a  monster,  in  the  face 
of  his  class.  However,  old  Short,  the  senior  censor, 
was  a  good-humoured  elderly  gentleman,  and  only 
laughed  louder  than  anyone  else.  Frederick  Rogers 
(whom  I  have  named  as  Gladstone's  fellow -student) 
was  a  quiet  and  decorous  undergraduate,  with  a  great 
sense  of  humour  underlying  that  decorum,  a  gift  which, 
but  for  his  fine  abilities  and  general  good  character, 
might  have  landed  him  now  and  then  in  a  scrape.  One 
particular  instance  of  this  I  recollect,  and  perhaps  my 
readers  may  like  to  have  it  recorded. 

The  Dons,  both  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  were 
careless  in  ascertaining,  or  rather  in  not  ascertaining, 
what  prize  subjects  had  been  set  of  late  at  the  sister 
university.  Macaulay's  prize  poem  of  Pompeii,  for 
instance,  was  made  considerable  use  of,  in  the  year 
1826  unless  I  am  mistaken,  by  a  certain  Mr.  Hawker 
who  gained  the  Newdigate,  on  this  same  subject,  of 
that  year.  Besides  gipsying  away  a  good  many  lines, 
he  quietly  conveyed  Macaulay's  notes,  totidem  verbis, 
into  his  manuscript.  The  Newdigate  in  question,  it 
may  be  said,  was  composed  quite  as  much  by  the 
help  of  Mercury,  who  besides  being  a  literary  deity, 


99 

is  also  the  god  of  thieves,  as  under  the  guardianship 
of  Apollo.  After  this,  the  incident  I  am  referring  to 
took  place.  A  passage  from  '  King  John '  was  selected 
at  Oriel,  to  be  turned  into  Greek  Iambics.  The 
same,  or  nearly  the  same  passage,  had  been  chosen 
for  the  Person  prize  at  Cambridge  a  certain  time 
before.  The  famous  Greek  scholar,  Dr  Kennedy, 
carried  off  that  prize.  Eogers,  who  had  been  suc- 
cessful at  Oriel  in  a  former  contest,  was  precluded 
by  our  Oxford  rules  from  competing  again  ;  he  was 
therefore  perfectly  at  leisure  to  assist  the  under- 
graduate conspiracy  then  set  on  foot.  Some  lines, 
either  at  the  end  or  the  beginning,  because  they  had 
not  formed  a  part  of  Mr.  Kennedy's  exercise,  Eogers, 
urged  by  the  mischievous  Oriel  party,  I  believe  agreed 
to  furnish.  A  sham  document  was  then  submitted 
to  the  fellows  under  the  name  of  an  honest  straight- 
forward undergraduate  (Mr.  Oldham)  who  could 
have  written  Chinese  verses  in  imitation  of  Litaipe, 
about  as  easily  as  Greek  Iambics  in  imitation  of 
Sophocles  or  Euripides.  Hardinge,  a  clever,  eccentric, 
but  somewhat  unmanageable  man  (he  was  afterwards 
Judge  Advocate,  and  made  a  bungle  of  the  unfortu- 
nate 'Alabama '  question),  took  an  interest  in  the  plot, 
but  refused  to  accept  any  active  share  in  it,  because 
he  foresaw,  with  prophetic  instinct,  that  the  moment 
the  plan  was  discovered,  the  Dons,  in  their  irritation, 
would  pounce  upon  him  as  the  probable  ringleader. 
Nothing  daunted  by  this  refusal,  the  Oriel  nihilists, 
with  Kogers  as  their  instrument,  if  he  were  their 


100  THE  FELLOWS  OF  ORIEL 

instrument,  proceeded  to  carry  the  scheme  into  effect. 
Days  passed  on,  and  the  culprits  watched  in  silent  en- 
joyment suppressed  symptoms  of  an  agitation  that  was 
beginning  to  ferment  among  their  tutors.  At  length 
the  critical  moment  arrived,  and  the  fellows  of  Oriel 
were  seen  marching  in  a  solemn  phalanx  towards  the 
common  room.  The  bell  was  rung,  and,  '  Send  Mr. 
Oldham  here,'  the  mandate  issued.  Oldham  arrived, 
quite  ignorant  why  they  wanted  him.  With  the  ut- 
most austerity  of  manner,  the  head  official  began  thus : 
*  Mr.  Oldham,  we  had  intended  awarding  to  you  the 
prize  for  Greek  Iambics '  (here  Oldham  opened  his 
eyes  in  bewildered  astonishment),  '  but  to  our  horror 
we  have  discovered  that  you  have  been  appropriating 
in  the  most  shameless  manner  verses  of  Mr. 
Kennedy's,  which  obtained  the  Porson  prize  a  few 
years  ago,  and  therefore,'  &c.  &c.  '  I,  sir,'  shouted  out 
the  innocent  Oldham,  '  why,  I  could  not  write  a  Greek 
Iambic  to  save  my  life !  I  don't  know  what  you  are 
talking  about.'  '  Mr.  Oldham,'  they  replied,  '  we  beg 
you  ten  thousand  pardons  for  an  unjust  suspicion.  "We 
ought  to  have  known  better;  go  in  peace,'  or  whatever 
is  the  nineteenth  century  equivalent  for  that  ancient 
term  of  courteous  dismissal.  Exit  Oldham,  but  as 
he  went  out,  the  bell  sounded  again,  and  the  words, 
'  Send  Mr.  Hardinge  here '  followed  him  into  the 
Quadrangle.  Hardinge,  then  summoned,  came  at 
once,  '  walking  delicately,'  like  Agag,  though  not 
exactly  in  Agag's  frame  of  mind.  '  Mr.  Hardinge,' 
was  thundered  in  his  ears,  '  are  you  one  of  the 


HARDINGE'S  TRIUMPH  101 

persons  who  have  imposed  upon  the  college  authori- 
ties in  this  audacious  manner?  '  '  Well,  sir/  was  the 
exulting  reply,  *  I  have  been  told  that  something  of 
the  kind  was  being  meditated,  but  as  I  had  a  fixed 
belief  that  you  would  throw  the  blame  upon  me  if 
you  could,  I  declined  having  anything  to  do  with  it.' 
After  this  double  rebuff,  no  further  steps  were  taken 
to  unearth  the  delinquents.  If  any  suspicion  fell 
upon  Rogers,  justly  or  unjustly,  the  fellows,  with 
whom  he  was  a  great  favourite,  probably  thought  it 
wiser  '  not  to  disturb  Camarina.' 

The  most  adventurous  thing  I  ever  did  at  Oxford 
in  Mr.  Gladstone's  company,  if  it  really  were  as  ad- 
venturous as  I  find  he  still  asserts  it  to  have  been, 
was  when  I  allowed  myself  to  be  taken  to  dissenting 
chapels.  We  were  rewarded  by  hearing  Chalmers 
preach  on  two  occasions,  and  Rowland  Hill  at 
another  tune.  I  say  this  was  my  most  adventurous 
exploit,  because  Mr.  Gladstone  thought,  and  still 
thinks,  I  believe,  that  we  should  have  been  rusticated 
had  we  been  found  out.  I  didn't  and  don't.  In 
earlier  days,  it  may  be  admitted,  the  authorities  would 
have  shown  us  no  mercy.  They  would  have  treated 
us,  I  dare  say,  as  Boswell's  '  good  creatures '  were 
treated,  Boswell's  good  creatures  being  certain  under- 
graduate Methodists  who  were  expelled  from  St. 
Mary's  Hall  for  holding  their  peculiar  services  there. 
Everybody  knows  Johnson's  answer  to  the  plea  of 
extenuation  put  forward  on  their  behalf  by  his  aide- 
de-camp.  '  Good  creatures,  sir,  yes — I  dare  say  they 


102  CHALMERS 

may  be,  in  their  proper  place.  A  cow,  sir,  is  a  very 
good  creature  in  a  field,  but  we  turn  her  out  of  the 
garden.'  Still,  whatever  might  have  happened  in 
1770,  they  could  scarcely  have  been  so  relentless  in 
1830,  and  my  belief  is  that  when  we  had  explained 
to  the  Dean  of  Christ  Church  how  we  had  merely 
gone  out  of  curiosity,  without  any  intention  of  leav- 
ing or  even  of  criticising  the  Church  of  England,  he 
would  have  let  us  off  with  a  reprimand  at  worst. 

Mr.  Gladstone  seems  to  have  delighted  in  these 
escapades,  as  I  find  a  letter  from  him  in  Hope  Scott's 
life,  stating  that  he  again  defied  the  university  rules 
in  his  company,  and  conducted  him  more  than  once 
into  what  they  both  would  afterwards  have  con- 
sidered the  Tartarus  of  dissent.  I  suppose  he  is  sure 
of  his  facts,  though  I  confess  a  doubt  crossed  my 
mind,  when  I  first  read  the  letter  in  question,  whether 
he  was  not  confusing  me,  then  his  intimate  friend, 
with  Hope  Scott,  who  was  not  an  intimate  friend, 
or  indeed  a  friend  at  all,  till  1836.  Of  Chalmers' 
oratorical  powers,  it  would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  speak. 
His  was  a  voice  that  filled  the  world,  the  English- 
speaking  world  at  any  rate,  from  end  to  end  in  its 
day,  although  if,  as  they  say,  he  was  one  of  those 
apt  to  confound  Augustine  of  Hippo  with  our  first 
Canterbury  Archbishop,  rhetoric  rather  than  theo- 
logical learning  must  have  been  his  strong  point. 

Rowland  Hill,  though  less  uniformly  eloquent,  was 
even  more  original  as  a  preacher,  and  from  his  great 
age,  brilliant  wit,  and  charmingly  eccentric  character, 


ROWLAND  HILL'S  REPARTEES  103 

was,  in  my  opinion  at  least,  as  interesting  a  personage. 
Macaulay,  in  one  of  his  essays,  has  preserved  some  of 
his  best  known  gibes,  particularly  that  famous  answer 
to  a  dissenting  donkey  who  remonstrated  with  him 
for  coming  to  chapel  (he  was  then  past  eighty)  in  his 
private  brougham.  l  Is  this,'  inquired  the  long-eared 
Methodist  in  question,  '  the  way  in  which  our  Lord 
himself  used  to  attend  divine  worship? '  Rowland 
Hill  (the  story  is  well  known,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that 
if  I  did  not  think  it  amusing  enough  to  bear  any 
number  of  repetitions,  I  should  hardly  be  justified  in 
repeating  it),  read  this  precious  .epistle  from  the  pulpit, 
admitting  with  an  air  of  ingenuous  penitence  that  our 
Saviour  had  not  been  in  the  habit  of  using  a  brougham. 
'  But,'  added  he,  '  to  atone  for  my  indiscretion,  if  the 
writer  of  this  letter  will  come  into  the  vestry,  after 
service  next  Sunday,  bringing  along  with  him  a  saddle 
and  a  bridle,  I  will  ride  him  home.'  But  though  he 
cites  this  and  other  witticisms  well  worth  preserving, 
Macaulay,  to  judge  from  the  above  essay,  was  igno- 
rant of  what  I  have  always  considered  the  subtlest 
and  most  exquisite  of  all  Rowland  Hill's  repartees, 
with  less  of  broad  fun  about  it,  no  doubt,  than  the 
one  I  have  just  narrated,  but  superior  to  it  in  quality 
and  fineness  of  grain.  He  used  to  go  about  to 
various  dissenting  chapels,  without  troubling  himself 
much  as  to  minute  differences  of  creed,  and  on  one 
particular  Sunday  he  found  himself  among  strangers. 
The  ordinary  worship  came  to  an  end,  and  the  Sacra- 
ment was  about  to  be  administered.  Rowland  Hill 

8 


104  OUR  TABLE 

presented  himself  as  a  communicant,  but  was  inter- 
rupted by  one  of  the  elders  of  the  church,  who 
asked  him  if  he  belonged  to  their  special  persuasion. 
'  Well/  was  the  answer,  '  I  am  a  sincere  Christian, 
and  accept  all  the  great  Christian  doctrines  with  abso- 
lute faith,  but  as  to  being  exactly  one  of  you,  I  do 
not  suppose  that  I  am.'  '  In  that  case,'  was  the  reply, 
'  I  am  afraid  that  we  cannot  admit  you  to  our  tailed 
1  Oh,  indeed,'  retorted  Rowland  Hill,  (I  beg  you  ten 
thousand  pardons,  I  would  not  intrude  for  the  world ; 
but  then  you  see,  I  thought  it  was  the  Lord's  table' 
If  the  functionary  thus  hit  and  wounded  had  a  skin 
less  thick  than  that  of  a  rhinoceros,  I  think  he  would 
have  sympathised  for  a  long  time  with  the  well-known 
line  of  Virgil's — 

Hseret  later!  lethalis  arundo. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Cardinal  Manning  as  a  member  of  the  Oxford  Debating  Society — His 
great  influence  over  his  contemporaries — His  views  on  the  subject 
of  Barilla — His  fate  as  an  explainer  contrasted  with  that  of  Adam — 
His  speech  on  the  question  whether  Shelley  or  Byron  were  the 
greater  poets — What  really  took  place  at  and  after  that  debate — 
Mr.  Gladstone  takes  Manning's  place  as  leader  of  the  Union — 
Mr.  Lowe's  first  appearance — Mr.  Gladstone's  Reform  speech  in 
1866 — Shakspeare  a  member  of  the  Stupid  Party — Mr.  Gladstone's 
Oxford  distinctions — How  we  competed  unsuccessfully  with  a 
schoolboy  for  the  Ireland  Scholarship. 

BEFORE  Mr.  Gladstone  paid  much  attention  to  the 
Debating  Society,  the  leader  of  our  house  was  Man- 
ning (the  present  Cardinal  and  Archbishop).  Be- 
sides possessing  great  natural  talents,  he  was,  I  think, 
having  been  at  first  intended  for  a  different  career, 
rather  older  than  his  average  contemporaries.  He 
would  always  have  been  in  the  ascendent,  but  his 
greater  maturity,  as  might  have  been  expected,  in- 
creased that  ascendency.  He  possessed  a  fine  pre- 
sence, and  his  delivery  was  effective.  These  qualities, 
joined  to  an  impressive  and  somewhat  imposing 
manner,  enabled  him  to  speak  as  one  having  autho- 
rity, and  drew  into  his  orbit  a  certain  number  of 
satellites  who  revolved  round  him,  and  looked  up  to 
him,  with  as  much  reverence  as  if  he  had  been  the 
actual  Pope,  instead  of  only  an  embryo  Cardinal. 


106  THE  BARILLA  DUTY 

Their  innocent  adulation  led  him  into  his  most 
obvious  weakness,  an  assumption  of  omniscience 
which  now  and  then  overshot  itself. 

There  was  a  story  illustrative  of  this  floating  about 
Oxford  in  my  time,  for  the  accuracy  of  which  I  by  no 
means  vouch,  but  it  amused  me  and  others  when  we 
heard  it.  In  the  debate  on  the  first  Reform  Bill,  Mr. 
Gladstone,  whilst  making  that  famous  speech  against 
it  which  introduced  him  to  the  old  Duke  of  Newcastle 
and  brought  him  into  Parliament,  as,  to  adopt 
Macaulay's  words,  '  the  one  hope  of  the  stern  and 
unbending  Tories,'  attacked  the  Whigs  in  a  part  of  his 
oration,  and  perhaps  not  with  perfect  fairness,  for  their 
administrative  incapacity.  They  had  been  out  of 
office  for  more  than  twenty  years,  and  were,  as  might 
have  been  anticipated,  somewhat  raw  and  unhandy  at 
the  technical  office  work  that  came  before  them.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  however,  at  that  period  was  not  disposed 
to  make  much  allowance  for  Liberal  weaknesses 
and  vacillations.  He  therefore  enumerated  a  lot  of 
trumpery  failures  in  succession,  always  driving  the 
imputation  home  with  this  galling  question  :  If  they 
cannot  say  the — the  whole — and  nothing  but  the — 
how  dare  they  thrust  upon  the  people  of  England  as 
i£  it  were  a  chapter  out  of  their  infallible  Whig 
Khoran  the  Bill — the  whole  Bill — and  nothing  but  the 
Bill  ?  One  of  these  reiterated  formulas,  was  the  barilla 
duty,  the  whole  barilla  duty,  and  nothing  but  the 
barilla  duty — in  the  fixing  of  which  some  hitch,  I 
suppose,  had  taken  place.  Stephen  Denison,  then  a 


ADAM  ON  THE  FIXED   STARS  107 

young  undergraduate  of  Balliol,  and  one  of  Manning's 
most  devoted  vassals,  puzzled  himself,  and  small 
blame  to  him,  over  this  expression  new  and  strange 
to  a  boy.  Accordingly,  in  all  humbleness,  he  sought 
out  his  pope  and  asked  him  for  an  explanation  of  the 
unknown  word.  *  Dear  me,'  replied  Manning  (this  at 
least  is  the  tradition),  '  not  know  what  barilla  means, 
I  will  explain  it  to  you  at  once.  You  see,  in  com- 
merce '  (now  Manning  had  been  intended  for  a  com- 
mercial career)  '  there  are  two  methods  of  proceeding. 
At  one  time  you  load  your  ship  with  a  particular  com- 
modity, such  as  tea,  wine,  or  tobacco,  at  other  times 
you  select  a  variety  of  articles  suitable  to  the  port  of 
destination.  And  in  the  language  of  trade  we  denomi- 
nate this  latter  operation  "  barilla." '  Stephen  Denisonr 
thus  carefully  instructed,  went  his  way,  but  in  a  week 
or  so  he  found  out  that  barilla  meant  burnt  seaweed  or 
its  equivalent,  and  his  faith  in  Manning's  infallibility 
was  no  longer  the  same. 

This  Oxford  legend  may  be  a  mere  fable,  but  even 
if  a  fable,  it  shows  where  his  Oxford  contemporaries 
thought  that  the  weak  point  in  the  future  Cardinal's 
armour  might  be  looked  for.  If  the  story  were  not 
invented,  Manning,  in  that  his  mistake  was  found  out, 
must  be  considered  less  lucky  as  an  explainer  than  the 
father  of  mankind  under  similar  circumstances.  Eve, 
as  anybody  may  see  who  will  turn  to  the  '  Paradise 
Lost,'  consults  Adam  as  to  the  nature  of  the  fixed 
stars,  and  receives  from  him  an  authoritative  exposi- 
tion of  that  phenomenon,  about  as  near  the  truth  as  the 


108  BYRON  AND  SHELLEY 

barilla  history  mentioned  above.  Eve,  I  presume, 
unlike  Stephen  Denison,  was  not  undeceived  in  this 
world.  Still,  though  Adam  kept  his  reputation  for 
wisdom  unimpaired,  his  knowledge  of  astronomy  was 
not  of  much  value,  and  but  that  Raphael,  the  affable 
archangel,  when  he  came  to  dinner  was  too  much  of 
a  gentleman  to  peach,  he  might  have  fared  as  ill  with 
his  wife  as  Manning  did  with  his  adherent. 

On  another  occasion  Manning  took  a  part,  and  a 
part  highly  creditable  to  himself,  in  a  memorable 
debate  on  the  comparative  poetical  merits  of  Byron  and 
Shelley.  This  discussion,  which  I,  under  Cambridge 
influences,  brought  forward,  was.  attended  by  three 
distinguished  members  of  the  Cambridge  Union, 
Arthur  Hallam,  Richard  Milnes,  and  Sunderland. 
They  came  over  from  the  sister  university  by  what 
was  then  called  the  Pluck  coach.  I  do  not  know  that 
I  can  give  a  better  account  of  this  debate  than  by 
reproducing  some  pages  of  a  lecture  on  Wordsworth 
delivered  by  me  at  Oxford. 

'  Many  of  the  young  may  wonder  that  I  make  no 
mention  of  Shelley  or  of  Keats.  The  fact  is,  that 
neither  of  these  two  poets  interfered  with,  or  helped 
to  overshadow,  Wordsworth  at  all.  The  premature 
death  of  Keats,  indeed,  was  perhaps  the  greatest  blow  ' 
of  its  kind,  the  severest  blighting  of  her  poetical 
bloom,  that  England  ever  sustained,  but  till  after  he 
had  passed  away  the  world  at  large  knew  nothing 
about  him. 

'  In  order  that  I  may  prove  to  you  how  Shelley 


QUOTATION  FROM  A  LECTURE  109 

also  was  unknown  and  unregarded,  I  am  tempted — 
and  for  this  I  hope  you  will  pardon  me — to  embark 
upon  a  digression. 

'  Some  three-and-forty  years  ago,  I  brought  for- 
ward a  motion  in  the  Oxford  Union  that  Shelley  was 
a  greater  poet  than  Byron.  The  debate,  after  the 
ordinary  fashion  of  non-political  debates,  would  pro- 
bably have  been  a  languid  one  ;  but  friends  of  mine 
at  Cambridge  (the  motion,  I  may  say,  was  an  echo  of 
Cambridge  thought  and  feeling)  took  the  matter  up, 
and  appeared  suddenly  on  the  scene  of  action.  The 
first  of  these  friends  was  Arthur  Hallam,  the  Marcellus 
of  our  time.  Of  him  I  need  not  speak  again,  I  need 
not  tell  you  how,  as  combining  perfect  sweetness  of 
nature  with  most  extraordinary  intellectual  gifts,  he 
left  upon  the  minds  of -all  who  knew  him  an  impres- 
sion never  to  be  effaced.  I  need  not  do  this,  I  say, 
for  has  not  his  monumtntum  cere  perennius  been  raised 
in  all  men's  sight  by  another  and  a  nobler  hand  ? 

'The  second  was  also  a  very  remarkable  man — 
Mr.  Sunderland.  By  common  consent  he  was  an 
orator  unequalled  in  promise,  and  at  that  moment 
rapidly  expanding  into  unequalled  power.  His  fate, 
alas  !  was  even  more  appalling  than  that  of  Arthur 
Hallam.  Just  as  he  was  issuing  forth  into  life,  all 
the  stormy  hopes — all  the  struggling  energies — all 
the  tumultuous  aspirations  of  his  impassioned  soul 
were  suddenly  arrested  by  the  grasp  of  some  myste- 
rious brain  disease.  For  forty  years  he  remained 
dumb  torpid  and  motionless,  recalling  to  our  minds 


110  SUNDERLAND 

that  mighty   image,    suggesting  itself  to  the  poet 
among  the  glaciers  of  Switzerland,  of 

A  cataract 
Frozen  in  an  instant. 

1  The  third  member  of  the  trio  happily  survives 
[alas,  not  now] — Lord  Houghton — known  to  all  men 
alike  for  his  brilliant  talents  and  for  the  sympathetic 
tenderness  of  his  nature  ;  for  the  helping  hand  eagerly 
stretched  out  to  raise  up  and  guide  any  struggling  way- 
farer of  literature,  who  happens  to  falter  or  faint  upon 
the  road.  The  first  two  found  no  difficulty  in  obtaining 
permission  to  come  here.  But  Lord  Houghton,  though 
at  least  as  great  an  enthusiast  for  Shelley  as  either  of 
the  other  two,  was  unluckily  at  the  moment,  as  I  was 
told,  a  gated  enthusiast.  In  order  to  fulfil  his  mission 
he  had  to  escape  from  the  iron  vigilance  of  Trinity, 
triumphant  but  breathless,  without  an  exeat,  and  also 
without  a  hat.  However,  here  he  was  ;  here  they 
were  ;  and  the  benches  of  the  Union,  instead  of  being 
scantily  dotted  with  indifferent  occupants,  swarmed 
and  murmured  like  a  hive  of  bees.  Lord  Houghton, 
some  of  you  may  perhaps  remember,  has  described 
the  discussion  that  ensued.  So  also  has  his  Grace, 
or  rather  his  Eminence,  the  Cardinal  Archbishop  of 
Westminster.  But  the  recollections  both  of  the  one 
and  of  the  other  are  hazy  and  incorrect.  Lord 
Houghton,  for  instance,  has  picturesquely  introduced 
Mr.  Gladstone — who  really  had  very  little  to  do  with 
the  business,  except  that  he  came  afterwards  to  supper 
— a  feat  that  might  have  been  accomplished  with  equal 


LORD  HOUGHTON  111 

success  by  a  man  of  much  inferior  genius.  The 
Cardinal  fancies  that  Hallam  and  Milnes  spoke  before 
Sunderland,  who  then,  according  to  him,  came  in  like 
Jupiter  Tonans,  and  electrified  his  hearers.  This 
was  not  so.  Sunderland,  a  politician  and  not  a  man 
of  letters,  imagined,  perhaps,  that  Arthur  Hallam's 
greater  knowledge  of  the  subject  and  profounder 
philosophical  faculty  might  take  the  wind  out  of  his 
sails.  At  any  rate,  he  spoke  first,  and  spoke  with 
great  effect,  though  scarcely,  I  believe,  with  the  same 
fire  that  he  often  put  forth  on  more  congenial  sub- 
jects. Then  followed  Hallam,  with  equal  if  not 
superior  force.  After  him  jumped  up  a  gentleman 
from  Oriel,  who,  in  a  bluff  and  burly  manner,  began 
to  pooh-pooh  the  pretensions  of  Shelley,  as  to  which, 
I  need  hardly  say,  he  was  absolutely  ignorant ;  when, 
all  at  once,  he  caught  sight  of  Mr.  Richard  Milnes, 
since  Lord  Houghton,  sitting  in  his  place.  He  caught 
sight  of  him,  as  of  one  still  competent  to  speak  in 
answer — still  competent  to  make  a  pounce,  and  tear 
him  limb  from  limb.  The  two  former  orators,  then, 
were  the  mere  velites,  the  skirmishers  of  the  expedi- 
tion, the  foraging  parties  in  advance  of  the  real  army  ; 
whilst  Lord  Houghton  represented  in  his  own  per- 
son the  triarii  of  the  tenth  legion,  the  Macedonian 
phalanx,  the  Old  Guard  of  Napoleon,  irresistible  in 
attack  and  inexorable  to  resistance.  In  the  presence 
of  that  terrible  antagonist  the  gentleman  from  Oriel 
lost  heart  and  faltered.  He  changed  his  front  at  once, 
and  went  over  to  the  enemy  like  the  Saxons  at  Leipsic, 


112  MANNING'S  REPLY 

in  the  very  middle  of  the  action,  recording  as  a  de- 
serter his  vote  for  Shelley,  to  the  amazement  and 
amusement  of  his  hearers.  Lord  Houghton  then  stood 
up,  and  showed  consummate  skill  as  an  advocate. 
In  order  to  prove  Shelley's  gradual  approximation 
out  of  his  boyish  atheism  to  the  principles  of  Christian 
truth,  he  read,  with  great  taste  and  feeling,  that  fine 
chorus  from  the  "  Hellas,"  one  of  Shelley's  latest 
works,  the  chorus  I  mean  containing  this  stanza  : 

A  power  from  the  unknown  God, 

A  Promethean  conqueror  came  ; 
Like  a  triumphal  path,  he  trod 

The  thorns  of  death  and  shame. 

Anxious,  however,  perhaps  over- anxious,  to  inculcate, 
or  as  somebody  once  phrased  it,  to  tread  the  truth 
into  the  ignorant  and  unthinking  multitude  before 
him,  he  passed  somewhat  lightly  over  the  fact  that 
the  chorus  in  question  is  a  dramatic  chorus,  and  put 
by  the  poet  into  the  mouths  of  captive  Christian 
women.  After  him  there  was  silence  in  the  Union 
for  several  minutes,  and  then  Mr.  Manning  of  Balliol, 
perhaps  at  that  particular  time  the  actual  leader  of 
our  debates,  with  great  propriety  rose.  He  felt  that 
it  would  be  a  somewhat  clownish  and  inhospitable 
proceeding  if  these  bold  guests  went  away  un- 
challenged— if  their  shields  were  not  touched  with  the 
arms  of  courtesy  by  some  daring  Oxford  cavalier. 
He  spoke  well,  exceedingly  well,  but  the  framework 
of  his  argument — the  backbone  of  his  oration — 
amounted  just  to  this  :  Byron  is  a  great  poet,  we  have 


THE  OXFORD  DEBATING  SOCIETY  113 

all  of  us  read  Byron  ;  but  (and  this  is  my  justifica- 
tion for  introducing  the  topic  at  all)  if  Shelley  had 
been  a  great  poet,  we  should  have  read  him  also ;  but 
we  none  of  us  have  done  so.  Therefore  Shelley  is 
not  a  great  poet — a  fortiori  he  is  not  so  great  a  poet 
as  Byron.  In  ham  sententiam,  an  immense  majority 
of  the  Union  went  pedibus  :  the  debate  was  over,  and 
we  all  of  us,  including  Mr.  Gladstone,  adjourned,  as  I 
have  said,  to  supper.' 

As  soon  as  Mr.  Gladstone  dawned  upon  the  Union, 
which  was  not,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  earlier  days  of 
his  undergraduateship,  he  took  the  first  place.  How 
far  this  pre-eminence  was  gained  by  eclipsing  his  pre- 
decessor Manning,  and  how  far  because  Manning1, 

O'  O  / 

whose  degree  time  was  approaching,  withdrew  from 
our  debates,  to  fall  back  upon  his  books,  I  do  not 
precisely  remember.  My  impression,  at  any  rate,  is 
that  the  two  were  not  in  full  activity  very  long  to- 
gether. Gladstone  and  Gaskell  became  the  leading 
Christ  Church  speakers.  Henry  Wilberforce  and 
Hardinge,  taking  a  tone  somewhat  different  from 
theirs,  upheld  the  reputation  of  Oriel.  Henry  Wil- 
berforce in  particular  exhibited  an  easy  grace  and 
facility,  such  as  the  Wilberforces,  one  and  all,  seem 
to  have  inherited  from  their  distinguished  father. 
Part  of  this  inheritance  was  the  wonderful  Wilber- 
force voice,  so  remarkable  for  its  melody  and  power. 
Nor  was  the  speaking  confined  to  the  regular 
debates.  Private  matters,  e.g.,  whether  we  should 
take  in  the  '  Sporting  Magazine '  or  not,  were  argued 


114     MR.  GLADSTONE'S  ANTI-REFORM  SPEECH 

about  with  great  earnestness,  and  what  was  said 
on  those  occasions  showed  now  and  then  a  life  and 
reality  which  our  formal  harangues  often  wanted. 
Still  the  great  oratorical  event  of  my  time  was,  as  I 
have  stated  just  now,  Mr.  Gladstone's  speech  against 
the  first  Reform  Bill ;  I  may  add  that  the  debate 
as  a  whole,  being  the  outgrowth  of  genuine  passion, 
and  an  excitement  shared  by  all,  was  better  than  the 
average.  Most  of  the  speakers  rose  more  or  less 
above  their  ordinary  level,  but  when  Mr.  Gladstone 
sat  down,  we  all  of  us  felt  that  an  epoch  in  our  lives 
had  occurred.  It  certainly  was  the  finest  speech  of 
his  that  I  ever  heard.  I  must,  however,  explain, 
that  this  is  not  his  fault,  but  mine.  Once  or  twice, 
when  I  have  tried  to  get  into  the  House  of  Commons 
in  the  hope  of  listening  to  him  at  his  best,  I  have 
failed  to  secure  a  seat,  and  the  only  time  when  I  was 
so  far  successful,  I  threw  away  my  chance  by  my 
own  folly.  I  was  sitting  under  the  gallery  expecting 
to  hear  his  reply  on  the  second  reading  of  the  Reform 
Bill  in  1866.  Everybody  anticipated  that  this  would 
be  one  of  his  greatest  efforts,  and  so  it  turned  out  to 
be,  but  Jasper  More,  the  then  member  for  Shrop- 
shire, induced  me  to  leave  my  place  and  dine  with 
him  in  the  coffee-room.  He  persuaded  me  to  do  this, 
by  solemnly  pledging  himself  that  he  could  manage 
matters  with  the  door-keeper  so  that  I  might  return 
when  I  chose.  Had  I  reflected  for  a  moment  I  must 
have  known  that  he  was  talking  nonsense,  but  I  felt 
hungry  and  somewhat  knocked  up,  after  sitting  there 


JASPER  MORE  IN  I860— MR.  LOWE  115 

motionless  for  hours,  and  in  a  moment  of  weakness 
I  yielded  to  the  voice  of  the  tempter.  On  going 
back  after  dinner,  I  found,  of  course,  that  Mr.  More 
had  made  a  promise  impossible  for  him  to  fulfil. 
Indeed  he  would  have  found  it  almost  as  easy  to 
annihilate  time  and  space,  and  to  procure  for  me  a 
comfortable  chair  in  the  Roman  Senate  House  whilst 
Cicero  was  impeaching  Catiline.  The  result  was 
that  I  had  to  kick  my  heels  in  the  lobby  till  the 
division  was  over,  favouring  Jasper  More  all  the 
while  with  a  good  deal  of  doubtful  language  under 
my  breath. 

To  return  to  our  Oxford  debate,  another  incident 
happened  in  the  course  of  it,  happened  to  me  at  least, 
which  left  me  for  a  moment  hardly  knowing  whether 
I  stood  upon  my  head  or  my  heels.  For  a  certain 
number  of  Thursdays,  the  day  when  our  debates  were 
held,  I  had  watched,  affectionately  and  respectfully, 
an  old  gentleman  with  snow-white  hair,  who  seemed 
to  have  become  a  regular  attendant.  I  have  already 
told  those  who  care  to  know,  that  I  am  as  blind 
as  a  bat,  so  that  any  thing,  or  any  person,  a  few 
yards  off,  is  most  imperfectly  discerned.  I  therefore 
pictured  to  myself  that  this  unknown  personage  was 
an  enthusiastic  veteran,  donatus  jam  rude,  who  sat 
watching  the  rising  generation,  to  see  if  a  flash  of 
lightning  here  and  there  were  visible  among  us. 
Week  after  week  I  kept  saying  to  myself,  there  is 
that  dear  old  boy  again.  How  nice  of  him  to  come 
and  investigate  for  himself  what  we  are  worth.  I 


116  MY  ASTONISHMENT 

wish  I  knew  who  he  is.  This  information  was  soon 
to  be  vouchsafed  to  me.  Whilst  the  Reform  debate 
was  going  on,  some  earnest  young  Tory  had  de- 
nounced Lord  Grey  and  his  colleagues,  as  a  vile  crew 
of  traitors.  He  had  hardly  finished,  when  up  jumped 
my  patriarch  (it  was  the  summer  term,  with  the  boat 
races  in  full  force),  and  in  a  bold  and  vigorous  tone 
of  voice  took  him  to  task  thus :  '  The  honourable 
gentleman  has  called  her  Majesty's  ministers  a  crew. 
We  accept  the  omen,  a  crew  they  are ;  and  with  Lord 
Grey  for  stroke,  Lord  Brougham  for  steerer,  and  the 
whole  people  of  England  hallooing  on  the  banks,  I 
can  tell  the  honourable  gentleman  they  are  pretty 
sure  of  winning  their  race.'  Down  he  sat,  loudly  and 
deservedly  applauded.  But  I — I  fell  into  a  state  of 
bewilderment  that  passes  description.  I  thought 
my  respected  Methuselah  had  suddenly  gone  mad. 
On  recovering  myself,  however,  I  made  inquiries, 
and  soon  discovered  that  I  had  been  revering  as  an 
ancient  sage  the  famous  white-headed  boy,  Bob 
Lowe,  now  flourishing  as  Lord  Sherbrooke.  He  after- 
wards held  his  place  till  I  left  Oxford  as  one  of  the 
most  effective  of  our  young  speakers.  But  in  spite 
of  Mr.  Lowe,  her  Majesty's  ministers,  so  far  as  we 
were  concerned,  did  not  win  their  race.  We  con- 
demned them  by  a  large  majority,  and  I  for  one,  if 
the  thing  were  to  be  done  over  again,  should  vote 
against  them  now  with  as  much  zeal  as  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  I  voted  against  them  then,  and  I  should  expect 
Lord  Sherbrooke  to  vote  with  me  instead  of  with 


THE  DUKE  OF  NEWCASTLE  117 

Mr.  Gladstone,  seeing  that  he  has  grown  wiser  as 
well  as  older.  I  wish  I  could  feel  that  this  progress, 
as  life  goes  on,  was  common  to  all  men — especially 
to  all  statesmen.  That  day,  besides  being  interest- 
ing to  us,  was  also  an  important  day  for  England. 
The  effect  produced  by  the  great  speech  was  imme- 
diately made  known  at  Clumber  by  Lord  Lincoln, 
and  that  stout  unbending  Tory,  the  old  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  at  once  exerted  himself  to  bring  Mr.  Glad- 
stone into  Parliament  as  member  for  Newark. 

To  us,  as  we  look  back,  it  appears  that  if  fate, 
according  to  a  phrase  now  in  fashion,  ever  condescends 
to  be  ironical,  she  must  have  amused  herself  a  good 
deal  in  watching  the  progress  of,  and  in  listening  to  the 
speeches  delivered  at  that  debate,  and  the  subsequent 
election.  We  only  hope,  as  lovers  of  Eton,  on 
behalf  of  the  founder  of  the  Newcastle  scholarship, 
that  if  the  spirit  of  his  Grace,  wherever  his  abode 
now  is,  still  takes  an  interest  in  British  politics, 
when  he  sees  how  he  has  been  acting  upon  them  of 
late,  through  his  carefully  selected  nominee,  consola- 
tion may  be  found  somewhere,  and  that,  at  the 
worst,  the  worthy  old  Tory  is  not  exposed  to  the 
scorching  sarcasms  of  the  '  first  Whig  '  on  account  of 
that  parliamentary  misadventure.  As  Shakspeare 
remarks,  '  There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 
rough  hew  them  how  we  will,'  and  the  truth  of  this 
maxim  conies  home  to  us  with  great  force,  when  we 
reflect  that  but  for  this  bigoted  old  duke,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, instead  of  becoming  in  his  youth  a  parliamen- 


118  PRO-REFORM  SPEECH  IN  18G6 

tary  orator  and  a  statesman,  would  undoubtedly  have 
been  called  to  the  Bar.  Had  this  event  taken  place, 
the  untiring  energy  given  by  him  to  everything 
he  takes  in  hand,  coupled  with  his  splendid  talents, 
must  have  ensured  him  a  signal  success.  The  proba- 
bility is,  that  he  would  not  have  entered  the  House 
till  he  entered  it  as  Solicitor- General,  in  which  case, 
I  venture  to  think  that  the  lessons  of  life  learnt,  and 
the  knowledge  of  human  nature  acquired  by  a  bar- 
rister in  large  practice,  would  not  have  been  without 
value  to  him,  when  he  became,  as  no  doubt  in  the  end 
he  would  have  become,  a  Cabinet  Minister  and  leader 
of  men. 

I  have  said  how  constantly  I  regret  not  having 
heard  his  famous  Reform  speech  in  1866,  not  only 
because  it  was  universally  accepted  as  one  of  his 
greatest  oratorical  efforts,  but  also  because,  when- 
ever I  read  it  over  in  Hansard,  some  portions  thereof 
seem  to  me  as  if  they  had  been  given  to  the  world 
roughly  and  imperfectly.  For  instance,  when  Mr. 
Disraeli,  who  had  himself  passed  over  from  extreme 
Radicalism  into  the  High  Tory  camp,  attacks  Mr. 
Gladstone  most  unfairly,  because  he  also  had  left  his 
youthful  opinions  behind  him,  the  defence,  however 
invulnerable  at  the  time,  reads  oddly  now.  There 
were,  I  cannot  doubt,  arguments,  elucidations,  and 
delicacies  of  explanation  in  the  actual  speech,  that 
have  effervesced  away  since,  and  are  not  now  to  be 
found  in  the  printed  volume.  Indeed  Mr.  Gladstone's 
apology,  as  it  stands  in  the  book,  is  simply  an 


WHY  MR.   GLADSTONE  CEASED  TO  BE  A  TORY  119 

apology  for  having  been  unfortunately  well  educated.1 
He  confesses  to  have  been  once  a  Tory,  but  excuses 
himself  because  he  had  been  brought  up  under  the 
influence  of  Canning  (the  greatest  practical  statesman 
of  the  day),  and  still  more  under  the  influence  of 
Burke,  still  revered  as  our  largest  and  wisest  political 
thinker.-  Surely  he,  a  thorough  scholar  and  student, 
might  have  added  that  his  mind  had  been  nourished 
up  to  maturity  by  a  multitude  of  great  writers,  that 
he  had  mastered  Thucydides,  Aristotle,  Plato,  and 
others,  all  well-known  critics  of  democracy.  From 
the  manner  in  which  he  speaks  of  these  influences, 
one  would  suppose  that  they  had  produced  within 
him  a  sort  of  intellectual  and  moral  blood  poison- 
ing, requiring  a  long  course  of  liberal  altera- 
tives, before  its  mischief  could  be  eradicated  from 
the  system. 

As  to  my  views,  I  am  a  pessimist,  and  think 
every  one  who  meddles  with  statesmanship  would 
do  well  to  begin,  by  admitting  that  all  the  forms 
and  varieties  of  government  are  bad,  because  they 
all  represent,  and  must  represent,  human  nature, 
a  combination  full  of  weaknesses,  follies,  and  faults. 
If  you  pull  down  a  monarchy,  the  evils  that  cling 
to  monarchy  may  cease  to  exist,  if  you  obliterate 
an  aristocracy,  oppressive  and  insolent  habits  of 
life  may  perish  with  it,  if  you  confiscate  property, 
and  trample  down  ancient  rights,  the  harsh  con- 

1  The  same  twist  of  his  intellect  seems  to  have  reproduced  itself 
just  now — as  every  one  not  his  vassal  knows  and  regrets. 

9 


120  STATE  OF  ENGLAND 

trasts  between  wealth  and  poverty  may  trouble  us 
no  more  ;  but  do  you  suppose  that  the  new  society 
as  it  replaces  the  old  will  not  also  represent  human 
nature  ?  represent  it  indeed  by  a  more  uneducated  and 
more  ignorant  subdivision  of  the  whole,  and  bring 
along  with  it  fresh  devilries — devilries  if  we  may 
trust  history,  or,  in  the  absence  of  history  common 
sense,  seven  times  worse  than  those  which  you  have 
just  cast  out.  You  cannot  have  a  perfect  govern- 
ment till  we  men  are  perfection,  and  whenever  that 
happens,  whether  there  is  a  government  or  no  govern- 
ment, will  not  signify  a  button.  The  first  object  of 
a  government  ought  to  be  the  maintenance  of  a 
national  life,  and  the  preservation  of  one's  place  in 
the  world.  This,  under  the  old  constitution,  a  consti- 
tution not  without  its  vices,  but  yet  able  to  unite 
freedom  with  energy  and  authority  after  a  fashion 
once  admired,  we  were  able  to  do.  Is  it  certain  that 
in  a  muddle  like  our  present  chaos,  still  more  when 
the  whole  direction  of  the  country  belongs  to  a  short- 
sighted, ignorant  multitude,  enmeshed  in  their  own 
immediate  interests,  and  hardly  knowing  what  a 
foreign  country  means,  we  should  once  more  be  able 
to  hold  our  own,  as  we  held  it  of  old,  against  the 
terrible  presence  of  a  Napoleon's  genius  and  power  ? 
Is  this  a  matter  of  no  importance,  or  is  it  the  only 
consequence  of  the  coming  changes  that  we  have  to 
fear  ?  Far  from  it,  we  can  learn  from  Shakspeare,  if 
we  like,  what  an  unchecked  and  unbridled  democracy 
means.  The  lines  I  am  about  to  quote  read  to  me 


SHAKSPEARE  A  SOUND  TORY  121 

like  a  prophecy  gloomily  foretelling  how  the  nine- 
teenth century  in  England  is  about  to  end. 

Degree  being  vizarded, 
The  unworthiest  shows  as  fairly  in  the  mask, 

(Shakspeare  apparently  would  not  have  given  his 
adhesion  to  the  Ballot), 

The  heavens  themselves,  the  planets,  and  this  centre 

Observe  degree,  priority,  and  place, 

Insisture,  course,  proportion,  season,  form, 

Office  and  custom,  in  all  line  of  order. 

.     .     .     .     O,  when  degree  is  shaked, 

"Which  is  the  ladder  of  all  high  designs, 

The  enterprise  is  sick  !  How  could  communities, 

Degrees  in  schools,  and  brotherhoods  in  cities, 

The  primogenitive  and  due  of  birth, 

Prerogative  of  age,  crowns,  sceptres,  laurels, 

But  by  degree,  stand  in  authentic  place  ? 

Take  but  degree  away,  untune  that  string, 

And,  hark,  what  discord  follows  !  Each  thing  meets 

In  mere  oppugnancy  ;  The  bounded  waters 

Should  lift  their  bosoms  higher  than  the  shores 

And  make  a  sop  of  all  this  solid  globe. 

Force  should  be  right;  or,  rather,  right  and  wrong 

(Between  whose  endless  jar  justice  resides), 

Should  lose  their  names,  and  so  should  justice  too. 

Then  everything  includes  itself  in  power, 

Power  into  will,  will  into  appetite, 

And  appetite,  an  universal  wolf, 

So  doubly  seconded  with  will  and  power, 

Must  make  perforce  an  universal  prey, 

And,  last,  eat  up  himself.  .... 

Mr.  Bright  is  never  tired  of  telling  us  that  we  con- 
stitute the  stupid  party  (perhaps  under  existing 
circumstances  these  invectives  will  drop  into  a  mo- 
mentary abeyance).  It  is  some  consolation  to  know 


122  THE  GUILLOTINE  OF  THE  FUTURE 

that  Sliakspeare  also  belonged  to  it.  I  think  we 
might  fairly  claim  Homer  too,  but  of  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, the  modern  high-priest  of  the  great  Hellenic 
poet,  will  be  able  to  judge  better  than  I  can.  Of 
course  it  may  be  said  by  the  Brights  and  Chamber- 
lains, that  they  accept  Shakspeare's  verses  as  a 
whole,  only  that  '  degree '  must  be  taught  from  this 
day  forward  to  begin  better,  viz.  at  the  honourable 
members  for  Birmingham.  In  this  case  it  is  pretty 
clear  that  they  will  have  to  answer  a  question  sure  to 
rise  up  from  beneath,  why  is  your  levelling  to  stop 
when  it  comes  down  to  you,  instead  of  descending 
step  by  step  till  it  reaches  us?  Such  a  question  was 
asked,  as  we  know,  of  the  Girondins,  by  the  Re- 
volutionary mob  of  Paris,  and  it  finally  answered 
itself  thus  :  '  Vergniaud,  Guadet,  Gensonne,  et  cin- 
quante-trois  autres,  a  la  guillotine.'  To  return  to  Mr. 
Gladstone's  Oxford  career.  In.  1831,  he  took  a  double 
first  class,  and  would  easily  have  obtained  a  fellow- 
ship  in  any  College  where  fellowships  depended  upon 
a  competitive  examination.  He  did  not,  I  believe, 
make  any  attempt  of  the  kind,  perhaps  he  thought 
that  his  acceptance  of  a  Christ  Church  studentship 
stood  in  the  way,  and  that  it  would  have  seemed  un- 
grateful to  his  own  College,  if  he  left  it  after  that, 
though  for  a  more  lucrative  holding  elsewhere.  Not 
that  a  Christ  Church  studentship  was  usually  thus 
looked  upon.  Henry  Denison  stood  for  All  Souls,  and 
Bruce  for  Merton,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  likely  enough 
might  be  more  sensitive  and  scrupulous — over-sensi- 


THE  IRELAND  SCHOLARSHIP  123 

tive  and  over- scrupulous,  I  think,  on  that  point — than 
other  men.  I  have  said  previously  that  we  Etonians 
were  riot  fitted  by  our  training  to  contend  on  equal 
terms  for  scholarships  with  Winchester  or  Shrews- 
bury opponents  ;  but  Mr.  Gladstone,  I  must  admit, 
very  nearly  put  me  in  the  wrong  on  that  point,  when 
he  tied  with  Scott,  the  finest  scholar  of  our  day,  for 
the  second  place  in  the  Ireland  of  1829.  Scott,  I 
should  fancy,  was  like  one  of  those  racehorses  who 
perform  extraordinary  feats  at  home,  but  when  tried 
at  Newmarket  or  Doncaster,  do  not  quite  run  up  to 
their  form.  There  can  be  no  question  (his  after 
work  proves  this),  that  the  reputation  he  brought  up 
to  Oxford  of  having  been  the  best  man  from  Shrews- 
bury, since  Dr.'  Kennedy  left  it  for  Cambridge,  was 
well  deserved.  And  yet  somehow  he  was  three  times 
beaten  for  the  Ireland  scholarship,  before  he  finally 
acquired  it  in  his  fourth  year.  On  this  occasion, 
when  Mr.  Gladstone  divided  the  second  honours  with 
him,  they  were  both  defeated  by  a  boy  named 
Brancker,  sent  up  from  Scott's  old  school  to  take  as 
it  were  a  preliminary  canter,  but  he  went  down  again 
at  the  end  of  the  week  to  execute  his  second  verses, 
with  victory  in  his  pocket. 

To  him  this  unexpected  triumph  was  a  delusion 
and  a  snare  ;  I  suppose  it  turned  his  head,  and 
led  him  to  idle  away  his  time  afterwards,  for  he 
did  nothing  else,  and  only  secured  a  second  class 
when  he  went  up  for  his  degree  ;  a  very  poor  con- 
clusion after  so  brilliant  a  start.  To  Scott  this  was 


124  MR.  GLADSTONE'S  DEGREE 

a  great  disappointment,  as,  reasonably  enough,  he  had 
made  quite  sure  of  winning.  There  was  a  long,  diffi- 
cult, and  corrupt  chorus  in  the  '  Eumenides/  which 
upset  us  one  and  all,  and  it  was  supposed  that 
Brancker  had  been  carefully  put  through  it  before- 
hand, in  obedience  to  a  happy  instinct  on  the  part 
of  his  head-master.  We  had  first  to  translate  it  into 
English,  and  then  into  Latin  Alcaics.  About  the 
latter  operation  there  was  no  difficulty  at  all,  each 
of  us  wrote  a  magnificent  copy  of  lyrics,  but  the 
translating  it  into  English  was  quite  another  matter. 
Herein,  both  Scott  and  Mr.  Gladstone  failed  as  signally 
as  I  did.  I  myself  do  not  think  that  sort  of  paper  a 
fair  one  to  set.  Examiners  have  a  right  to  test  your 
accuracy  and  acuteness  with  hard  Greek,  but  not 
with  Greek  corrupted  into  gibberish  by  careless  or 
stupid  transcribers.  The  boy  who  happens  to  be 
familiar  with  it,  and  who  knows  what  Bentley  and 
Porson  and  Herman  have  said,  and  what  conjectural 
emendations  they  may  have  suggested,  obtains  an 
unfair  advantage. 

In  the  Schools  afterwards,  Mr.  Gladstone's  classi- 
cal first  was  about  the  best  that  had  been  gained  for 
many  years,  not  so  much  from  superior  scholarship 
in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  word  (though  even  in 
that  respect  there  was  no  fault  to  be  found  with 
him),  as  from  his  philosophical  and  historical  know- 
ledge, and,  if  I  may  pick  up  a  phrase  out  of  our 
modern  conversation,  his  general  excellence  all 
round.  The  only  mistake,  as  far  as  I  know,  made  by 


UNIVERSITY  SERMONS  125 

him  in  his  viv&  voce  examination,  to  which  I  listened 
most  attentively,  was  one  that  I  was  sure  to  detect. 
The  examiner,  perhaps  a  Yorkshireman  like  myself, 
asked  him  to  name  the  finest  horses  brought  over 
from  Asia  by  Xerxes  when  he  invaded  Europe. 
He  replied,  plausibly  enough,  but  quite  wrongly, 
that  they  were  Arabians  (the  Arabs  were  all 
mounted  on  camels),  instead  of  those  matchless  white 
Cilician  coursers,  who  ran  clean  away  from  their 
Thessalian  antagonists,  supposed  to  be  of  the  finest 
breed  in  Greece.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  perhaps  ac- 
cepted Bolingbroke's  view  of  history,  that  it  is 
philosophy  teaching  by  examples,  and  not  a  dry 
register  of  useless  anecdotes,  and  believed  that  such 
a  query  belonged  to  Bolingbroke's  class  of  idle  and 
irrelevant  inquiries.  This  may  or  may  not  be  so.  As 
a  lover  of  the  turf,  I  think  that  if  Crassus,  for  in- 
stance, had  been  led  to  reflect  by  that  passage  in 
Herodotus,  how  an  irregular  cavalry  mounted  on 
fleet  Eastern  horses  was  likely  to  act  in  its  native 
desert,  he  might  have  saved  his  Roman  army  from 
being  hopelessly  cut  to  pieces  in  the  sand  wastes  of 
Parthia.  Still,  at  the  worst,  this  trivial  mistake  only 
brought  out  into  greater  relief,  as  it  were,  the  width 
and  accuracy  of  his  general  knowledge.  The  only 
other  time  during  our  undergraduate  days  that,  to 
borrow  a  metaphor  from  the  cricket  field,  I  scored  off 
Mr.  Gladstone,  was  a  victory  in  quite  another  direc- 
tion. He  used  rather  to  mount  guard  over  my 
religious  observances,  and  habitually  marched  me  off 


126  DULL  SERMONS. 

on  Sundays  after  luncheon  to  the  University  sermon 
at  2  o'clock.  Now  I  have  not  the  gift  of  snoring 
comfortably  under  a  dull  preacher ;  instead  of  a 
narcotic,  he  acts  on  my  nerves  as  an  irritant ;  but 
with  Mr.  Gladstone  the  case  was  otherwise.  One 
afternoon  I  looked  up  and  discovered,  not  without  a 
glow  of  triumph,  that  although  the  reverend  gentle- 
man above  us  had  not  yet  arrived  at  his  {  Thirdly,' 
my  mentor  was  sleeping  the  sleep  of  the  just.  '  Ho! 
ho !  '  said  I  to  myself,  '  no  more  2  o'clock  sermons 
for  me.'  Accordingly,  on  the  very  next  occasion 
when  he  came  to  carry  me  off,  my  answer  was  ready. 
'  No,  thank  you,  not  to-day  ;  I  can  sleep  just  as  well 
in  my  arm-chair  here  as  at  St.  Mary's.'  The  great 
man  was  discomfited,  and  retired  shaking  his  head, 
but  he  acknowleged  his  defeat  by  troubling  me  no 
more  in  that  matter.  \ 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Catholic  Emancipation — Albany  Fonblanque's  saying  about  it  many 
years  afterwards — The  Tory  Cassandraa  right  in  their  prophecies 
as  to  Catholic  Emancipation,  Parliamentary  Reform,  and  Free 
Trade— Readings  away  from  Oxford  with  Mr.  Patch — His  extra- 
ordinary acquirements — My  visit  to  Mr.  Gladstone  in  Kincardine- 
shire — Great  natural  powers  of  Mr.  John  Gladstone,  his  father — 
Pursuit  of  archery — Dunnottar  Castle — Hope  Scott — His  Life  by 
Mr.  Ornsby — Cardinal  Newman — Hope  Scott's  bloodhound — 
Other  incidents  belonging  to  Natural  History  observed  by  me. 

IT  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  remark  that 
in  1829,  one  of  our  undergraduate  years,  the  first 
great  Liberal  measure,  I  mean  Catholic  emancipation, 
was  carried  into  effect.  Mr.  Gladstone  and  I  (most 
of  us  indeed),  as  worshippers  of  Canning,  were  zea- 
lous pro -Catholics,  and  felt  rejoiced  that  this  act  of 
justice  had  (however  tardily  and  awkwardly)  been 
accomplished  whilst  we  were  still  young  and  full  of 
enthusiasm  ;  but  yet — but  yet — if  we  look  back  at  the 
joyous  anticipations  heralding  its  advent,  and  con- 
trast them  with  the  actual  results,  there  is  room  for 
grave  disappointment.  I  recollect,  many  years  after 
1829,  walking  away  from  a  dinner  with  Albany 
Fonblanque  (who  certainly  cannot  be  accused  of 
Tory  proclivities),  when  he  broke  out  suddenly,  '  It 
is  a  galling  thing  to  have  to  acknowledge  to  one's 
self,  that  in  the  matter  of  Catholic  emancipation  we 


128  ALBANY  FONBLANQUE 

were  quite  wrong,  and  George  III.  and  all  the  damned 
fools  were  perfectly  right.'  Now  at  the  house  where 
we  had  been  dining  the  claret  was  good,  still  with 
due  respect  to  the  proverb,  '  In  vino  veritas,'  he 
probably  did  not  mean  all  that  he  said,  but  some  of 
it  he  certainly  did. 

I  was  led  to  recall  his  remark  the  other  day,  and 
indeed  to  carry  it  somewhat  further,  as  I  lighted  on 
one  of  those  instances  of  shallow  self-conceit  cha- 
racteristic of  the  empty  minded  politicians,  who  fill 
their  bellies  with  the  East  wind  of  Liberal  platitudes, 
not  giving  to  the  important  subjects  about  which  they 
talk,  as  parrots  talk,  one  moment  of  real  human 
thought.  The  gentleman  to  whom  I  refer  is  the 
author  of  a  somewhat  tedious  '  Life  of  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,'  and  in  discussing  that  statesman's  project 
of  establishing  an  Excise,  he  thinks  it  necessary  to 
break  forth  into  a  general  outcry  against  the  Tories. 
He  points  out  that  in  Walpole' s  time  *  the  Tory 
Cassandras  '  indulged  themselves  in  the  same  absurd 
and  unmeaning  apprehensions  about  the  proposed 
Excise  plan,  as  they  have  since  done  about  Catholic 
emancipation,  Reform,  free  trade,  and  the  like.  In 
the  first  place  it  is  worth  while  to  notice  the  '  curios  a 
infelicitas  '  of  the  writer's  phrase.  He  seems  to  have 
forgotten,  if  he  ever  knew,  that  the  ill-omened  pre- 
dictions of  Cassandra,  though  they  were  invariably  dis- 
believed in,  turned  out  nevertheless  to  be  invariably 
true,  and  I  may  add  that  the  Tory  Cassandras  against 
whom  he  lifts  up  his  voice  have  inherited,  more  or  less, 


TORY  CASSANDRAS  129 

this  melancholy  gift  from  their  Trojan  forerunner. 
To  begin  with  Catholic  emancipation  ;  it  was  well,  no 
doubt,  and  even  if  not  well,  it  was  probably  inevit- 
able, that  some  such  measure  should  pass,  but  it  was 
carried  through  Parliament  by  the  wrong  people,  too 
late,  at  an  unlucky  moment,  and  after  an  unlucky 
fashion,  so  that  there  were  great  drawbacks,  entirely 
overlooked  by  its  advocates,  of  whom  I  was  one,  but 
on  the  other  hand,  distinctly  foreseen  and  foretold 
by  its  opponents.  Those  who  voted  in  its  favour 
believed,  or  affected  to  believe,  that  all  religious 
enmity  and  rancour  would  very  soon  drop  away  out 
of  life ;  that  men,  now  on  equal  terms,  would  teach 
themselves  as  good  citizens  to  differ  without  bitter- 
ness, and  never  stop  to  ask  whether  such  a  one  went 
to  church  or  to  chapel. 

On  looking  back  to  the  debates,  we  find  that  the 
great  Irish  orator,  Lord  Plunket,  when  he  pressed 
the  measure  upon  the  House  of  Lords,  ridiculed  the 
idea  that  anything  done  to  relieve  the  Roman  Catholics 
could  tend  to  the  disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church. 
1  If  that  were  proved,'  he  went  on  to  say,  '  he  would 
resist  the  measure  as  strongly  as  any  noble  lord  on 
the  opposite  benches.'  It  was  Lord  Lyndhurst,  lead- 
ing on  the  Tories,  who  replied,  *  Not  so.  The  aggres- 
sive character  of  Rome  (for  which  I  am  not  blaming 
her)  can  never  be  extinguished,  it  is  part  of  her 
nature ;  and  every  concession  we  make  will  be  mainly 
valued  by  her,  as  a  step  towards  recovering  that  lost 
supremacy  which  neither  persecution  nor  temptation 


130  CATHOLIC  EMANCIPATION 

will  ever  induce  her  to  forego.'  Towards  this  faith 
Albany  Fonblanque,  philosophical  Radical  though  he 
might  be,  had  to  veer  round  ;  and  we  read  in  Hope 
Scott's  Life  how,  when  Mr.  Gladstone  abolished  the 
Irish  Church,  that  immense  and  milooked  for  con- 
cession was  contemptuously  flung  back  in  his  face, 
by  the  dearest  friend  he  had  in  the  world,  with  the 
chilling  remark,  that '  until  he  had  refixed  that  Church 
in  the  position  held  by  her  before  the  Reformation,  he 
would  have  done  nothing  and  earned  no  gratitude.' 
We  can  therefore  hardly  pronounce  Albany  Fon- 
blanque— though  he  probably  refrained  from  talking 
in  that  way  except  when  claret  had  melted  him  into 
candour- — to  have  been  altogether  wrong  in  his  re- 
cantation. In  point  of  fact,  the  gulf  of  separation 
between  Papists  and  non-Papists  has  grown  wider 
and  deeper  than  it  was  during  my  boyhood.  Mar- 
riages then  easily  arranged  have  now  become  almost 
impossible  ;  and,  passing  beyond  that,  I  happen  to 
know  (regretting,  but  not  venturing  to  condemn 
his  intolerance),  that  Cardinal  Manning  preferred  to 
upset  a  charitable  plan,  framed  in  the  largest  spirit  of 
charity  to  benefit  all  within  its  reach,  rather  than 
permit  his  Catholic  vassals  to  join  in  repeating  the 
Lord's  Prayer  (a  prayer  round  which  as  round  its 
central  sun  our  common  Christianity  has  been  thought 
to  revolve),  in  company  with  their  Protestant  fellow- 
citizens. 

However  great  their  general  incapacity,  it  is  not 
as  a  school  of  prophets  that  the  '  stupid  party  *  has 


REFORM  IN  CONNECTION  WITH  PROPHECIES      131 

failed  of  success.  In  the  second  place,  with  regard 
to  Reform,  I  am  not  going  to  argue  for  or  against  it ; 
it  may  have  been  right,  or  if  not  right,  it  may  have 
been  impossible  not  to  urge  it  forward  ;  still  I  defy 
the  closest  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  satellites,  even  Sir 
William  Harcourt  (originally  more  a  comet  than  a 
satellite  in  the  Gladstonian  system)  to  contradict  me 
when  I  affirm  that  the  gloomy  anticipations  of  the 
Tory  Cassandras  «as  to  the  consequences  of  the 
Reform  Bill  were  much  nearer  the  truth  than  the 
rose-coloured  visions  of  '  Finality  John.'  Lord 
Somers  has  not,  according  to  the  programme  of  1831, 
taken  St.  George's  place  as  the  patron  saint  of  Eng- 
land, nor  has  the  Whig  millennium,  under  the  per- 
petual guidance  of  Greys,  Cavendishes,  and  Russells, 
kept  gliding  on  through  peaceful  decades  to  its 
appointed  haven,  with  envious  Tories  silenced  on  the 
one  side,  anl  grateful  Radicals  applauding  on  the 
other;  Far  from  it,  we  are  being  hurried  headlong 
into  democracy,  and  at  this  very  moment,  even 
advanced  Liberals  do  not  seem  quite  easy  in  their 
minds  about  the  '  Revolution  of  1884.'  They  hold 
out  to  us,  no  doubt,  this  vague  comfort,  that  we  can 
trust  the  people  of  England.  Of  course  we  can,  when- 
ever the  natural  good  qualities  of  that  people  have 
been  trained  and  disciplined  into  trustworthiness. 
We  can  trust  English  soldiers,  so  long  at  least  as  they 
are  properly  educated  for  their  work,  to  stand  firm 
and  to  fight  well ;  they  have  been  taught  how  to  stand 
firm,  and  how  to  fight  well ;  but  I  do  not  trust  the 


132  FREE  TRADE 

masses  to  guide  this  great  Empire  wisely,  or  to  deal 
with  infinite  complications  and  almost  insuperable 
difficulties,  as  to  which  they  are  as  ignorant  as  babies, 
any  more  than  I  would  trust  my  solicitor  to  make 
me  a  pair  of  boots,  or  my  shoemaker  to  draw  up  a 
will.  Again  I  say  that  the  reforming  Cagliostros, 
though  possibly  wiser  as  statesmen,  have  no  claim 
to  compete  as  seers  with  the  Cassandras  of  Toryism. 
Lastly,  as  to  free  trade,  it  may,  like  Catholic 
emancipation  and  Parliamentary  Reform,  have  been 
the  least  bad  of  two  evil  alternatives  pressing  upon 
us  at  the  moment,  but  certainly  its  promoters  are 
not  entitled  to  take  rank  as  artists  in  prophecy. 
Free  trade,  according  to  Messrs.  Cobden  and  Co., 
was  to  extend  her  beneficent  influence  everywhere, 
'from  China  to  Peru.'  So  far  from  this  being  the 
case,  the  instinctive  common  sense  of  mankind  has 
hardened  its  heart  against  it  like  the  nether  mill- 
stone, from  St.  Petersburg  to  Cape  Horn.  Our  very 
colonies,  loyal  and  true  as  they  are  said  to  be, 
refuse  to  listen  to  us  on  this  point,  whilst  the 
Cassandra  statement,  that  British  agriculture  would 
be  ruined,  is  rapidly  accomplishing  itself.  I  read  in 
the  '  Times '  not  long  ago,  some  sort  of  project  for 
turning  the  country  into  one  vast  dairy  farm,  and 
reasons  urged  in  consequence  why  the  Government 
should  be  active  in  waging  war  upon  the  foot  and 
mouth  disease  ;  and  since  then  the  papers  have  been 
filled  with  exulting  anticipations  from  Manitoba 
farmers,  that  in  ten  years  British  competition  must 


MR.   SENIOR  133 

become  hopeless,  so  that  no  farmer  in  England  would 
be  fool  enough  to  grow  corn  any  more.  I  must 
confess  that  my  faith  in  free  trade  was  rudely  shaken 
long  ago.  I  was  reading  Mill  in  some  uncertainty  of 
mind,  when  I  lighted  upon  a  passage  praising  an 
American  political  economist  with  such  extraordinary 
enthusiasm,  that  I  actually  bought  and  read  the  book. 
This  praise  astonished  me,  and  when  I  accidentally 
found  out  from  Lord  Dalmeny  that  he  was  a  friend  of 
Senior's,  the  Oxford  professor  of  political  economy, 
I  put  my  difficulty  before  him,  and  asked  him  to 
sound  Senior  on  the  subject.  The  next  time  I  met 
him,  he  came  up  laughing,  and  said,  '  Well,  I  did 
not  get  much  out  of  Senior.  The  moment  I  mentioned 
the  book,  he  also  began  to  praise  it  furiously,  de- 
claring himself  to  be  the  man  who  had  discovered  it 
and  shown  it  to  Mill ;  but  when  I  asked  him,  as  I  did, 
quoting  you  as  my  authority,  how  it  came  to  pass 
that  a  political  economist  of  that  high  class,  could 
have  written  a  treatise  for  the  sole  purpose  of  up- 
holding protection,  and  exposing  the  failures  of  free 
trade,  he  answered  thus:  "Oh  I  never  looked  at  that 
part  of  the  book  ;  what  I  am  referring  to  as  so  excel- 
lent is  a  certain  chapter  on  the  accumulation  of  capital, 
and  other  discussions  of  a  like  kind."  As  soon  as  I 
got  home  I  shut  up  Mill,  and  put  him  back  upon  the 
shelf.  I  thought  that  pedants  who  were  so  afraid  of 
entangling  themselves  in  the  labyrinth  of  their  own 
science,  that  they  would  not  follow  a  man  whose 
genius  and  power  they  admitted  a  single  step  off  the 


134  POSSIBILITIES  IN  A  WAR 

beaten  road,  lest  they  should  find  no  end, '  in  wandering 
mazes  lost,'  were  no  guides  for  me,  because  it  was 
clear  that  they  could  not  have  any  confidence  in 
themselves. 

To  me,  who  I  admit  have  never  studied  the  sub- 
ject with  much  care,  it  appears  that  the  tendency 
of  free  trade  in  the  long  run  must  be  to  adjust  mer- 
cantile prosperity  in  proportion  to  each  country's 
natural  resources,  and  that  as  we  had  risen  to  the  top 
of  commerce  by  a  series  of  accidents  in  quite  other 
ways,  it  was  scarcely  wise  to  scatter  that  artificial 
superiority  to  the  winds  at  once,  without  at  least 
attempting  to  secure  something  in  the  shape  of  an 
equivalent  for  our  sacrifices  ;  nor  can  I  doubt  that 
there  are  matters  connected  with  free  trade  requiring 
to  be  taken  into  consideration,  which  yet  its  advo- 
cates always  refuse  to  consider.  In  the  first  place, 
with  wheat  driven  out  of  cultivation,  our  difficulties 
in  a  war  forced  upon  us,  at  their  own  time,  by  the 
envy  and  ambition  of  others,  might  easily  become  im- 
measurable ;  absolute  surrender,  or  a  famine  recalling 
the  famine  of  Jerusalem,  being  the  alternatives  before 
us.  This  to  my  mind  cannot  be  dismissed  as  a  mere 
idle  vision.  Secondly,  if  British  agriculture  is  ruined, 
something  must  be  done  with  the  labourer  thrown  out 
of  employment.  Either  emigration  on  a  large  scale 
will  take  away  all  the  best  and  most  vigorous  among 
them,  draining  as  it  were  the  national  heart  of  its 
reddest  blood  ;  if  not,  the  squalid  population  of  the 
great  towns  will  be  increased  beyond  all  measure  and 


EMIGRATION  135 

management.  In  either  case  a  gradual  degradation  of 
the  British  people  is  sure  to  set  in,  and  I,  for  one,  am 
not  prepared  to  see  with  a  light  heart  those  natural 
forces  which  have  built  up  the  England  of  history, 
carried  off  from  here  to  the  other  side  of  the  world, 
or  else  rotting  into  rum,  at  home,  lest  theorists 
should  have  to  retire  from  any  of  the  details  of  their 
somewhat  technical  and  artificial  creed.  As  I  have 
said,  however,  I  am  not  discussing  political  economy 
in  the  abstract.  What  I  undertake  to  show,  and 
have  shown,  is,  that  in  the  matter  of  free  trade,  as 
before  in  the  matter  of  Catholic  emancipation  and 
Parliamentary  Reform,  the  prophets  who  prophesied 
smooth  things  are  beaten  out  of  sight,  and  again 
the  cry  is — '  Cassandra  wins.' 

During  the  last  terms  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  under- 
graduateship,  I  was  not  .much  at  Oxford  with  him  ; 
in  fact  I  had  let  so  much  time  slip  away  without 
profiting  by  it,  that  I  felt,  if  I  meant  to  get  a  first 
class,  I  must  read  hard  for  it,  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  I  should  do  better  away  from  Oxford.  Accord- 
ingly, I  obtained  leave  after  the  long  vacation,  and 
grappled  with  my  task  at  home.  Even  then  I  should 
probably  have  failed  but  for  my  good  fortune  hi 
lighting  upon  Mr.  Patch,  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
men  I  have  encountered  in  the  course  of  a  long  life. 
He  was  a  most  admirable  scholar,  though  not  quite  a 
scholar  in  the  modern  style.  His  Oxford  education 
had  ended  before  the  present  honour  system  began  ; 
he  had  therefore  read  books,  not  to  take  them  up  in 

10 


136  MR.   PATCH 

the  Schools  for  examination,  but  simply  to  master 
Greek  and  Latin,  and  thereby  to  cultivate  his  intellect. 
He  was  supposed  to  be  the  finest  mathematician 
hitherto  turned  out  by  Oxford,  and  his  general  know- 
ledge was  something  portentous.  He  was  not,  how- 
ever, a  fortunate  man.  Originally  intended  for  the 
medical  profession,  his  extreme  susceptibility  to  fevers 
forced  him  out  of  it,  and  drove  him  back  upon  his 
Oxford  fellowship.  In  that  place  he  achieved,  par- 
ticularly as  a  mathematical  tutor,  the  greatest  success. 
Had  he  lived  a  strictly  blameless  life,  he  would  have 
done  well.  Had  he  been  a  hypocrite,  and  indulged 
his  weakness  with  due  caution,  perhaps  better  still. 
As  it  was,  without  taking  any  particular  pains  to 
hide  his  proceedings,  he  carried  certain  habits,  acquired 
as  a  medical  student,  into  the  position  of  an  Oxford 
Don,  and  soon  found  out  that  he  had  made  a  mistake. 
He  quickly  became  notorious,  and  was  hunted  away 
from  Wadham,  his  College,  as  a  social  leper.  This, 
though  unfortunate  for  him,  was  lucky  for  me,  inas- 
much as  I  secured  an  instructor  for  six  months,  such 
as  I  never  could  have  found  otherwise.  Under  him 
I  read  harder  than  I  had  ever  done  before,  or  have 
done  since,  and  came  out  one  of  the  three  (the  other 
two  being  Lord  Blachford  and  Mr.  Brewer,  after- 
wards a  well-known  divine)  who  made  up  the  classical 
first  class  at  the  summer  examination  of  1832.  Some 
idea  of  Mr.  Patch's  various  knowledge  may  be  in- 
ferred from  this  fact,  that  whilst  I  was  reading  the 
*  Timaeus '  with  him  (the  deepest  and  abstrusest  of  all 


HIS  EXTENSIVE  KNOWLEDGE  137 

Plato's  dialogues),  hardly  a  day  passed  without  his 
bringing  down  from  London  an  essay  on  some  recon- 
dite subject  connected  with  that  difficult  treatise ;  e.g., 
first  an  essay  setting  forth  all  that  is  known  about 
the  old  Greek  music.  He  was  himself  a  scientific 
musician  as  well  as  a  profound  scholar,  and  therefore 
quite  well  worth  listening  to  on  the  subject.  Secondly, 
a  paper  about  anatomy,  as  understood  by  the  ancients, 
with  which,  as  a  thorough  master  of  medicine,  he  was 
perfectly  conversant.  Thirdly,  an  account  of  modern 
chemistry,  as  illustrated  by  Plato's  more  imperfect 
theories  ;  and  so  on.  I  often  pressed  him  afterwards 
to  publish  an  edition  of  this  book,  which,  according 
to  my  belief,  no  other  man  in  England  could  have 
done  half  so  well ;  but  misfortune  in  the  past  had 
made  him  careless  and  despondent,  and  he  preferred 
living  from  hand  to  mouth.  As  now  fifty  years  and 
more  have  passed  since  I  looked  into  the  '  Timaeus,' 
I  frankly  confess  that  I  do  not  remember  much  about 
it  beyond  its  general  character  and  form.  The  one 
thing  that  clings  to  my  memory  is  what  Mr.  Patch 
told  me  about  the  arteries.  '  After  death  the  veins 
are  full  and  the  arteries  empty,  so  that  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  being  as  yet  undiscovered,  the  men 
of  old  naturally  looked  on  the  latter  as  air,  not  as 
blood  vessels  ; '  but,, he  added,  '  this  is  not  always  so. 
In  cases  of  absolutely  sudden  extinction,  notably 
when  a  man  is  killed  on  the  spot  by  lightning,  the 
veins  are  empty  and  the  arteries  full.' 

Shortly  after  taking  my  degree,  I  spent  some  time 


138  FASQUE  IN  KINCARDINESIHRE 

with  Mr.  Gladstone  at  his  father's  house  in  Kincar- 
dineshire,  a  large  comfortable  house,  in  a  picturesque 
part  of  the  country.  Whilst  there,  I  was  very  much 
struck  with  the  remarkable  acuteness  and  great 
natural  powers  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  father.1  Under 
his  influence,  apparently,  nothing  was  ever  taken  for 
granted  between  him  and  his  sons.  A  succession  of 
arguments  on  great  topics  and  small  topics  alike, 
arguments  conducted  with  perfect  good  humour,  but 
also  with  the  most  implacable  logic,  formed  the  staple 
of  the  family  conversation.  Hence  it  is  easy  to  see 
from  what  foundations  Mr.  Gladstone's  skill  as  a 
debater  has  been  built  up. 

I  was  also  able  to  confirm  my  previous  opinion 
as  to  the  energy  and  pertinacity  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
character.  One  of  the  amusements  (occupations, 
rather)  resorted  to  by  us  before  August  12  arrived, 
was  shooting  with  bows  and  arrows.  The  grass  on 
each  side  of  the  target  grew  very  long,  and  in  this 
the  said  arrows  conspired,  one  would  say,  to  hide 
themselves  without  the  slightest  remorse.  I  sug- 
gested that  we  should  leave  them  to  themselves,  like 
naughty  children,  and  trust  their  recovery,  which 
was  sure  to  come  about  in  the  end,  to  chance  and 
time.  This,  as  there  were  plenty  of  recruits  at  hand, 
would  have  saved  us  trouble,  and  suited  my  easy- 
going views  of  life.  But  no — Mr.  Gladstone  was 
made  of  sterner  stuff,  and  not  to  be  persuaded,  so 
that  whenever  a  culprit  disappeared,  we  had  to  keep 

1  Afterwards  Sir  John. 


ARCHERY— DUNNOTTAR  CASTLE  139 

marching  up  and  down  like  the  sentinels  before 
St.  James's  Palace,  until  some  one  of  us  caught  sight 
of  the  truant  in  his  lurking  place.  This  rendered 
our  pursuit  of  archery  (it  was,  as  the  reader  may  see, 
literally  a  pursuit),  a  somewhat  serious  one,  and  we 
took  our  pleasure  therein,  after  the  manner  of  Frois- 
sart's  Englishman,  sadly  enough. 

On  another  occasion,  we  started  on  horseback 
for  Dunnottar  Castle,  a  place  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  great  historical  interest.  He  was  riding  a  skittish 
chestnut  mare,  who  would  not  let  him  open  a  gate 
in  front  of  us.  My  cob  was  perfectly  docile,  and 
quiet  as  a  sheep,  so  I  naturally  said,  '  Let  me  do  that 
for  you.'  But  *  no  '  again.  His  antagonist  had  to  be 
tamed  out  of  her  obstructiveness,  and  for  forty  minutes 
she  reared  and  sidled  and  plunged  &  la  Randolph 
Churchill  rather  than  h,  la  Northcote,  whilst  I  sat  as 
motionless  on  my  sleepy  little  nag  as  the  Emperor 
Aurelian  sits  on  that  hollow-backed  brute  at  Rome 
which  artists  insist  on  our  admiring.  In  time, 
however,  a  steady  hand  and  a  strong  will  are  apt 
to  prevail  with  mares,  as  with  other  personages 
of  the  same  sex,  and  we  went  on  towards  our 
castle. 

At  that  period  Mr.  Gladstone  had  not  mounted 
up  to  his  High  Church  views,  and  Glenalmond  was 
still  a  long  way  off.  He  attended  the  Presbyterian 
Kirk  zealously  and  contentedly,  and  took  me  along 
with  him  to  what  they  call  the  'fencing  of  the 
tables ' — an  operation  lasting  five  or  six  hours.  It 


140  HOPE  SCOTT 

is  not  altogether  a  pleasant  recollection.  If  I  had 
known  what  the  fencing  was,  I  should  have  parried 
the  invitation. 

I  cannot  remember  the  exact  date  of  this  visit, 
but  it  must  have  been  two  or  three  years  before  1836, 
when  his  acquaintance  with  James  Hope  Scott  sud- 
denly ripened  into  a  warm  friendship  :  a  friendship 
apparently  based  upon  identical  opinions  and  aims, 
though  this  supposed  identity  turned  out  in  the  end 
to  be  a  mere  delusion.  Hope  Scott  was  at  one  time 
the  most  intimate  friend  I  had  at  Oxford,  but  as  I 
would  not  accompany  him  to  Rome,  or  even,  in 
Yorkshire  phraseology,  '  set  him  a  piece  o'  t'  way ' 
in  that  direction,  our  friendship,  after  a  time,  ceased 
to  maintain  itself  in  an  active  state.  It  was,  I 
suppose,  impossible  for  him,  as  his  sense  of  religion 
deepened  into  an  absorbing  passion,  to  be  intimate 
with  anyone  who  did  not  share  his  opinions  more  or 
less,  and  after  the  way  in  which  we  had  grown  up 
together,  acquaintanceship  short  of  intimacy  was  out 
of  the  question.  He  therefore,  either  led  by  his  own 
convictions,  or  influenced  by  others,  soon  dropped  me 
out  of  his  daily  life  as  an  incurable  heretic.  There 
never  was  any  quarrel,  nay,  there  never  was  any 
coolness  between  us,  and  I  have  reason  to  believe 
that  he  regarded  me  to  the  last  with  that  sort  of 
affection  which  keeps  alive  for  us  the  memory  of  the 
dead.  Of  this  I  was  assured  directly  by  Cardinal 
Manning,  and  indirectly  many  years  afterwards  by 
Mr.  Monteith  of  Carstairs,  himself  a  convert  to 


MR.   ORNSBY'S  BIOGRAPHY  141 

Catholicism,  but  we  hardly  ever  met,  and  when  we 
did  it  was  by  accident. 

A  Reverend  Mr.  Ornsby  has  recently  published  an 
elaborate  account  of  Hope  Scott's  career.  On  this 
Mr.  Macmillan  asked  me  to  make  some  comments.  I 
consented,  though  with  some  reluctance,  and  accord- 
ingly a  paper  of  mine  appeared  in  his  Magazine  for 
April  1884.  As,  however,  an  article  in  a  Magazine 
addresses  itself  to  a  limited  circle  of  readers,  and  only 
produces  a  momentary  impression,  I  do  not  think 
it  out  of  place  to  repeat  here  some  of  the  things  I 
have  already  said  in  that  article.  Hope  Scott  was 
a  sufficiently  remarkable  person  to  interest  a  new 
generation,  especially  since  the  memoirs  I  speak  of 
have  shown  that  there  were  not  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries entitled,  morally  or  intellectually,  to  rank 
with  him.  Of  his  early  years,  and  the  early  years  of 
distinguished  men  are  always  attractive,  I  do  not 
know  any  one  able  to  speak  more  authoritatively  than 
myself,  nor  can  I  mend  what  I  have  written  on  the 
subject  already.  I  shall,  therefore,  plagiarise  from 
my  article  in  Macmillan  without  scruple. 

Mr.  Ornsby  makes  this  statement :  'In  1824 
James  was  removed  to  the  Reverend  Edward  Pole- 
Hampton's  preparatory  school  for  Eton,  at  Greenford 
Rectory,  Essex.  Among  his  companions  there  were 
Lord  Selkirk  and  the  present  Sir  Francis  Doyle.' 
This  is  a  mistake  :  in  1824  I  was  already  at 
Eton,  and  so  far  from  having  been  at  Mr.  Pole- 
Hampton's  with  him,  I  never,  to  my  knowledge, 


H2  HOPE'S  PUN 

heard  of  the  reverend  gentleman  till  I  saw  his  name 
printed  in  Mr.  Ornsby's  book.  My  acquaintance 
with  Hope  Scott  began  in  1825,  when  he  came  to  the 
house  of  our  dame,  Mrs.  Holt  of  Eton.  He  was  my 
junior  by  about  two  years,  and  I  gave  him  the  best 
advice  I  could  about  his  verses,  private  business,  and 
the  like.  He  was  wonderfully  handsome  and  agree- 
able-looking, and  distinguished  by  a  very  charming 
manner.  We  associated  together,  whilst  at  Eton, 
mostly  in  the  house,  I  naturally  taking  my  exercises 
and  amusements  with  boys  nearer  my  own  part  of 
the  school,  who  were  friends  already  made.  For 
some  reason  or  other,  perhaps  merely  from  indolence, 
an  indolence  attributed  by  Mr.  Ornsby  to  the  effects 
of  a  severe  typhus  fever  that  had  attacked  him  in 
Italy,  Hope  Scott  was  not  particularly  keen  about 
school  glory  of  any  kind. 

Fate  drove  me  to  literature  and  verse-making, 
because  I  was  as  blind  as  a  bat,  and  a  good  deal 
crippled  by  an  early  accident  besides,  but  there  was 
no  apparent  reason  why  he  should  not  have  figured 
successfully  in  the  playing  fields  or  rowed  with  credit 
in  the  boats.  To  the  best  of  my  recollection,  he  did 
not  do  any  great  things  in  that  line,  nor  on  the  other 
hand  did  he  show  any  special  zeal  for  his  Greek  and 
Latin.  Again,  what  I  always  regretted,  he  refused 
to  join  the  Debating  Society,  either  at  Eton  or  at 
Oxford.  This  explains  why  his  acquaintance  with 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  comparatively  slight,  till  1836, 
when  their  High  Church  sympathies  brought  them 


'VISION  OF  ER  THE  PAMPHYUAN'  143 

together.  Mr.  Ornsby  says,  '  he  was  given  to  pun- 
ning ' — and  I  recollect  the  punning  reason  he  gave 
me  for  declining  to  mix  himself  up  with  our  discus- 
sions at  Oxford.  He  said  the  place  was  only  fitted 
for  'des  betes.'  Still,  as  the  first  speech  that  he 
made  was  almost  as  much  a  success  as  Erskine's, 
practice  beforehand  would  have  probably  been  but  of 
little  advantage  to  him.  At  Oxford  our  friendship 
was  closer  than  at  Eton,  since  we  lived  together  both 
indoors  and  out.  Our  principal  relaxation  was  riding 
on  Oxford  hacks,  whose  absolute  duty  it  was  to 
gallop,  so  that  they  had  all  but  forgotten  the  arts  of 
walking  and  trotting.  We  read  with  each  other  a 
great  deal  in  our  rooms  (principally  Plato)  and  used 
to  discuss  him  afterwards  according  to  our  lights. 
This  still  interests  me  as  connected  with  almost  the 
last  flashing  up  of  our  half-extinguished  friendship. 
A  poem  of  mine, '  The  Vision  of  Er  the  Pamphylian,' 
founded  on  a  legend  in  the  '  Republic '  of  Plato,  was 
privately  printed  before  I  gave  it  to  the  world.  I 
sent  it  to  him  (this  was  after  he  had  gone  over  to 
Rome),  with  the  following  letter  :  '  My  dear  Hope, — 
Circumstances  have  caused  us  to  drift  asunder,  but  I 
do  not  see  anything  in  that  to  prevent  me  from  for- 
warding to  you  these  verses  in  memory  of  the  books 
we  read  and  the  thoughts  we  interchanged  at  Christ 
Church.' 

I  received  hi  return  an  affectionate  reply,  accom- 
panied by  an  invitation  to  Abbotsford.  This  invita- 
tion, by  ill-luck,  some  other  engagement  prevented 


144        CHANGE  IN  HOPE'S  TEMPER 

me  from  accepting,  so  that  I  never  saw  him  in  his 
own  house  after  he  became  a  Catholic.  Going  back- 
wards again  to  Oxford  and  my  friend  Hope  :  we  rode 
and  we  walked,  we  read,  and  we  talked  and  dined 
together,  we  entrusted  to  each  other  our  hopes  and 
longings,  and  never,  I  suppose,  were  two  men  on 
more  confidential  terms  than  he  and  I,  till  the  '  rift 
in  the  lute'  began  to  show  itself.  After  the  first 
year  at  Christ  Church  a  strange  gloom  fell  upon  his 
spirits,  and  turned  him  from  being  the  most  brilliant 
youth  of  the  day  into  a  sullen  recluse,  shrinking 
from  all  society.  This  change,  as  far  as  associating 
with  him  went,  to  me  made  no  difference,  although  it 
grieved  me  much.  It  was  not,  in  the  first  instance 
at  least,  the  outcome  of  any  religious  impulse — it 
rather  proceeded  from  a  profound  dissatisfaction  with 
life,  aggravated,  if  not  mainly  caused,  by  a  terrible 
family  affliction.  His  youngest  brother  Alexander 
got  wet  through  out  hunting,  and  took  refuge  in  a 
peasant's  cottage.  He  was  most  hospitably  received, 
and  the  owners  insisted  on  putting  him  to  bed  whilst 
they  dried  his  clothes  ;  but,  alas  !  they  forgot  that 
the  bed  had  been  occupied,  some  months  before,  by 
one  of  their  sons  whilst  suffering  from  small-pox. 
Alexander  Hope  caught  the  disease  and  died  without 
a  chance  of  escape. 

I  have  said  that  James's  sudden  melancholy  was 
not  the  outgrowth  of  any  religious  impulse,  if  any- 
thing, it  worked  in  the  opposite  direction.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  he  was  at  any  time  a  real  sceptic,  but  if 


RELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT  145 

he  ever  dallied  with  scepticism,  it  would  have  been 
during  those  months  of  despondency  when  he  sat 
alone  in  his  long  dismal  room  at  Christ  Church  brood- 
ing over  French  and  German  metaphysics.  In  truth 
his  mental  state  was  such  that  I  feared  he  might  go 
mad.  It  was  not  long,  however,  before  he  found 
safety  and  peace  by  giving  up  his  whole  heart  to  the 
Church,  and  seeking,  through  her  influence,  to  raise 
the  moral  and  religious  condition  of  the  university 
after  a  fashion  of  his  own.  It  is  a  curious  instance 
of  the  intense  zeal  with  which  he  embraced  his 
religious  opinions,  that  no  friendship,  apparently, 
could  keep  its  hold  upon  him  unless  in  harmony 
with  them.  He  withdrew  from  all  personal  intimacy 
with  Mr.  Gladstone  on  becoming  a  Catholic — even 
more  formally  and  decisively  than  he  withdrew  from 
mine  on  becoming  a  High  Churchman.  It  was  not, 
I  am  sure,  that  he  ceased  to  regard  either  Mr.  Glad- 
stone or  me  with  a  certain  affection,  only  he  settled 
that  it  was  better  for  him  not  to  give  way  to  it,  but 
as  it  were  '  to  pass  by  on  the  other  side.'  No ,  such 
necessity,  that  I  am  aware  of,  has  ever  suggested  itself 
to  Cardinal  Newman.  He  retains  his  kindly  feelings 
towards  those  whom  he  knew  of  old,  and  interests 
himself  in  his  former  friends  and  favourites  with  the 
old  warmth  of  heart,  Protestants  though  they  be.  It 
was  Cardinal  Newman,  I  think,  whose  example  ope- 
rated most  strongly  in  leading  Hope  to  the  Catholic 
Church.  That  great  man's  extraordinary  genius  drew 
all  those  within  his  sphere,  like  a  magnet,  to  attach 


146  CARDINAL  NEWMAN 

themselves  to  him  and  his  doctrines.  Nay,  before  he 
became  a  Romanist,  what  we  may  call  his  mesmeric 
influence  acted  not  only  on  his  Tractarian  adherents, 
but  even  in  some  degree  on  outsiders  like  myself. 
Whenever  I  was  at  Oxford,  I  used  to  go  regularly  on 
Sunday  afternoons  to  listen  to  his  sermon  at  St. 
Mary's,  and  I  have  never  heard  such  preaching  since. 
I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  a  mere  fancy  of  mine,  or 
whether  those  who  know  him  better  will  accept  and 
endorse  my  belief,  that  one  element  of  his  wonderful 
power  showed  itself  after  this  fashion.  He  always  be- 
gan as  if  he  had  determined  to  set  forth  his  idea  of  the 
truth  in  the  plainest  and  simplest  language,  language 
as  men  say  '  intelligible  to  the  meanest  understand- 
ing.' But  his  ardent  zeal  and  fine  poetical  imagina- 
tion were  not  thus  to  be  controlled.  As  I  hung  upon 
his  words,  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  could  trace  behind 
his  will,  and  pressing,  so  to  speak,  against  it,  a  rush 
of  thoughts  and  feelings  which  he  kept  struggling  to 
hold  back,  but  hi  the  end  they  were  generally  too 
strong  for  him  and  poured  themselves  out  in  a  torrent 
of  eloquence  all  the  more  impetuous  from  having  been 
so  long  repressed.  The  effect  of  these  outbursts  was 
irresistible,  and  carried  his  hearers  beyond  themselves 
at  once.  Even  when  his  efforts  of  self- restraint  were 
more  successful,  those  very  efforts  gave  a  life  and 
colour  to  his  style  which  riveted  the  attention  of  all 
within  the  reach  of  his  voice.  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy, 
in  his  '  History  of  Our  Own  Times/  says  of  him  : 
'  In  all  the  arts  that  make  a  great  preacher  or  orator, 


MR.  JUSTIN  MCCARTHY  147 

Cardinal  Newman  was  deficient.  His  manner  was 
constrained  and  ungraceful,  and  even  awkward,  his 
voice  was  thin  and  weak,  his  bearing  was  not  at  first 
impressive  in  any  way — a  gaunt  emaciated  figure,  a 
sharp  eagle  face  and  a  cold  meditative  eye,  rather 
repelled  than  attracted  those  who  saw  him  for  the 
first  time.'  I  do  not  think  Mr.  McCarthy's  phrases 
very  happily  chosen  to  convey  his  meaning.  Surely 
a  gaunt  emaciated  frame,  and  a  sharp  eagle  face,  are 
the  very  characteristics  which  we  should  picture  to 
ourselves  as  belonging  to  Peter  the  Hermit,  or  Scott's 
Ephraim  McBriar  in  '  Old  Mortality.'  However  un- 
impressive the  look  of  an  eagle  may  be  in  Mr. 
McCarthy's  opinion,  I  do  not  agree  with  him  about 
Dr.  Newman.  When  I  knew  him  at  Oxford,  these 
somewhat  disparaging  remarks  would  not  have  been 
applicable.  His  manner,  it  is  true,  may  have  been 
self-repressed,  constrained  it  was  not.  His  bearing 
was  neither  awkward  nor  ungraceful ;  it  was  simply 
quiet  and  calm  because  under  strict  control ;  but  be- 
neath that  calmness,  intense  feeling,  I  think,  was 
obvious  to  those  who  had  any  instinct  of  sympathy 
with  him.  But  if  Mr.  McCarthy's  acquaintance  with 
him  only  began  when  he  took  office  in  an  Irish  Catholic 
university,  I  can  quite  understand  that  (flexibility 
not  being  one  of  his  special  gifts)  he  may  have  failed 
now  and  again  to  bring  himself  into  perfect  harmony 
with  an  Irish  audience.  He  was  probably  too  much 
of  a  typical  Englishman  for  his  place  ;  nevertheless 
Mr.  McCarthy,  though  he  does  not  seem  to  have 


148  EDWARD  BADDELEY 

admired  him  in  the  pulpit,  is  fully  sensible  of  his 
intellectual  powers  and  general  eminence. 

Dr.  Pusey,  who  used  every  now  and  then  to  take 
Newman's  duties  at  St.  Mary's,  was  to  me  a  much 
less  interesting  person.  A  learned  man,  no  doubt, 
but  dull  and  tedious  as  a  preacher.  Certainly,  in  spite 
of  the  name  Puseyism  having  been  given  to  the  Ox- 
ford attempt  at  a  new  Catholic  departure,  he  was  not 
the  Columbus  of  that  voyage  of  discovery,  undertaken 
to  find  a  safer  haven  for  the  Church  of  England.  I 
may,  however,  be  more  or  less  unjust  to  him,  as  I  owe 
him  a  sort  of  grudge.  His  discourses  were  not  only 
less  attractive  than  those  of  Dr.  Newman,  but  always 
much  longer,  and  the  result  of  this  was  that  the  learned 
Canon  of  Christ  Church  generally  made  me  late  for 
dinner  at  my  College,  a  calamity  never  inflicted  on 
his  All  Souls  hearers  by  the  terser  and  swifter  fellow 
of  Oriel  whom  he  was  replacing. 

Another  Oxford  friend  of  mine  who  looked  up  to 
Hope  and  Newman  with  the  most  enthusiastic  admi- 
ration, and  in  the  end  followed  them  to  Rome,  was 
Edward  Baddeley.  With  him  I  recollect  having  a 
rather  curious  conversation  just  before  he  became  a 
Romanist.  I  was  anxious,  not  unnaturally,  to  learn 
what  Hope's  determining  motives  were  when  he 
ceased  to  be  a  Protestant,  because  I  considered  him, 
from  his  abilities  and  worldly  position,  to  be,  if  not 
the  most  important  convert,  at  least  the  most  impor- 
tant lay  convert  of  those  years  secured  by  the  Church 
of  Rome.  After  giving  me  the  explanation  I  re- 


VARIATIONS  OF  THE  INNER  EYE  149 

quired  as  well  as  he  could,  he  began  to  talk  about 
himself.  '  I  have  left,'  he  said,  c  the  English  commu- 
nion for  good  and  all,  but  to  Eome  I  never  will  go ;  I 
cannot  stand  her  Mariolatry.'  To  this  I  replied  : 
'  There  is  nothing  wonderful  to  me  in  Davie  Deans's 
electing  himself  as  the  infallible  guide  of  his  own  con- 
science, and  that  of  his  one  follower,  but  you,  with  your 
intense  zeal  for  church  history,  your  absolute  faith 
in  Apostolic  succession  and  other  Catholic  doctrines, 
will  find  yourself  in  a  very  difficult  position.'  His 
answer  was,  '  I  know  I  shall,  but  I  must  make  the 
best  of  it ;  I  cannot  accept  the  worship  of  the  Virgin.' 
How  many  days  passed  before  he  swallowed  and  di- 
gested that  doctrine,  I  cannot  exactly  remember,  ac- 
cording to  my  present  impression,  about  a  fortnight ; 
and  I  suppose  in  a  month  or  two  he  would  have  been 
prepared  to  adore  St.  Ursula  and  her  eleven  thousand 
handmaidens  at  the  bidding  of  the  Pope.  Such  emo- 
tional changes  of  opinion  are  not  intelligible  to  me, 
and  therefore  I  must  not  criticise  them.  There  are, 
I  should  say,  variations  of  the  '  inner  eye,'  analogous 
to  those  variations  of  the  outward  sense  of  sight, 
which  at  their  extreme  point  lead  some  people  to 
confound  red  and  green.  As  with  our  bodily,  so  it 
may  be  with  our  mental  faculties.  Fountain-heads 
of  thought  and  feeling,  which  exist  for  A,  may  not 
exist  for  B,  or  exist  only  under  such  altered  condi- 
tions as  to  differ  in  kind  rather  than  in  degree :  on 
such  questions  therefore,  we  cannot  understand  each 
other,  and  must  rest  satisfied  with  a  reciprocal 


150  HOPE'S  BLOODHOUND 

toleration.  By  way  of  changing  the  subject,  I 
shall  mention  a  thing  that  struck  me  at  the  time  as 
curious  and  interesting.  When  Hope  and  I  walked  out 
together,  he  usually  took  with  him  a  young  blood- 
hound, and  it  occurred  to  us  that  we  would  try  the 
dog's  powers  by  hunting  each  other.  To  effect  this, 
either  Hope  or  I  walked  on  two  or  three  hundred 
yards,  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  backwards  and 
forwards,  in  circles  and  squares.  Then,  as  soon  as 
the  chasee  had  taken  up  his  station,  either  behind  a 
tree  or  elsewhere,  the  chaser  put  on  the  dog.  It  was 
a  beautiful  sight  to  see  with  what  perfect  accuracy  he 
threaded  out  our  windings,  increasing  in  pace  and 
power  of  motion  as  he  approached  the  end.  I  frankly 
confess,  that  when  I  saw  him,  on  the  first  occasion, 
about  twenty  yards  off,  leaping  four  feet  into  the  air 
at  every  stride,  I  felt,  if  I  may  revert  to  Eton  phrase- 
ology, 'rather  in  a  funk.'  On  reaching  me,  however, 
he  sank  down  instantly  into  the  exact  attitude  of  a 
setter  marking  game.  I  should  have  thought  before- 
hand, that  finding  a  Mend  he  would  have  jumped 
and  fawned  upon  him.  But  no,  it  appeared  as  if  the 
bloodhound  instinct  were  supreme ;  and  that  having 
been  set  on  my  track,  though  not  an  enemy  to  be 
caught  by  the  throat,  I  became  his  goal  for  the  time 
being,  not  his  friend.  This  practice  he  always  re- 
peated. As  I  have  touched  on  Natural  History,  I 
may  as  well  mention  one  or  two  of  the  most  remark- 
able facts  it  has  presented  to  me  in  life,  before  passing 
on  to  some  other  Oxford  friends,  since  if  I  omitted  to 


OTHER  STORIES  FROM  NATURAL  HISTORY     151 

notice  the  incidents  here,  very  likely  they  would  pass 
out  of  my  mind  altogether. 

I  was  on  a  visit  at  Donington  in  Leicestershire, 
sitting  with  my  hostess,  Barbara  Lady  Hastings. 
On  one  side  of  the  room  was  a  sort  of  aviary,  holding 
some  thirty  birds  or  so,  birds  gathered  from  every 
part  of  the  world.  All  at  once  she  interrupted  me  in 
a  story  I  had  begun  to  tell  her,  and  said  '  Now  I  want 
you  to  listen.  You  hear  that  creature  making  an 
uncouth  grumbling  noise  ;  he  is  a  very  ill-bred,  ill- 
conditioned  husband,  and  is  now  quarrelling  with 
his  wife.  In  a  second  or  two  he  will  say  something 
arousing  the  righteous  indignation  of  the  whole  com- 
munity ;  do  attend  for  a  moment.'  I  obeyed,  and 
sure  enough,  almost  immediately  a  general  hubbub 
rose  up  from  the  cage,  which  seemed  to  me,  as  far  as 
I  could  judge,  the  absolute  equivalent  of  what  we  do 
when  we  call  for  the  police.  '  There,'  said  my  com- 
panion, '  I  wanted  you  to  hear  that ;  it  happens  three 
or  four  times  a  week,  and  always  under  the  same 
circumstances.' 

Now  I  can  understand  that  the  prize-winning 
parrot  when*  introduced  to  its  several  competitors 
should  shriek  out :  '  My  eye !  what  a  lot  of  parrots ! ' 
I  can  understand  that  a  great  lawyer's  pious  cockatoo, 
after  escaping  out  of  confinement,  and  beholding 
from  the  top  of  a  tree  its  august  master  in  a  hurry 
to  recover  it,  should  mockingly  intone  '  Let  us  pray,' 
in  a  not  unfamiliar  voice.  But  that  a  single  form  of 

speech  should   be   intelligible  to   birds   of   twenty 
11 


152  SPIDERS 

species  from  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and  America  alike, 
is  a  marvel  in  my  eyes.  Why,  if  Leibnitz  had 
realised  his  universal  language  for  men,  such  a  wide- 
spread power  of  intercommunication  would  leave 
him  and  us  far  behind.  I  can  only  vouch  for  the 
fact,  leaving  it  to  be  explained  by  naturalists  wiser 
than  I  am. 

Passing  from  dogs  and  birds  to  insects,  it  would 
seem  that  the  instincts  and  habits  of  the  latter  are 
more  interesting,  and  indicate  a  stronger  personality 
than  I  at  least  was  aware  of.  I  have  heard  some- 
where of  a  girl  who  tamed  certain  butterflies,  so  that 
they  would  come  at  a  peculiar  call  and  drink  up 
syrup  from  her  hand  and  from  her  lips.  This  story 
may  or  may  not  be  true,  but  from  what  I  have  seen 
myself  I  have  no  great  difficulty  in  believing  it. 

Whilst  I  was  hard  at  work  under  Mr.  Patch,  I 
read  my  books  in  a  hayloft  above  the  stables.  When 
I  was  tired  of  working  I  amused  myself  for  a  minute 
or  two  by  watching  the  manners  and  customs  of 
certain  spiders  with  which  the  place  abounded.  I 
daresay  an  illustrious  arachnologist,  as  somebody  was 
once  called  by  somebody  else,  would  have  distin- 
guished many  different  kinds.  I  only  marked  out 
two  varieties,  whose  plans  of  life  differed  altogether. 
Spider  No.  1,  as  soon  as  a  fly  had  entangled  herself 
in  his  snare,  walked  leisurely  down  and  wove  round 
its  victim  a  thick  network  of  thread.  As  soon  as 
the  poor  thing  was  hopelessly  handcuffed  and  stifled, 
she  was  drawn  up  to  a  sort  of  larder  at  the  top  of  the 


WASPS  153 

premises,  and  left  there  till  wanted.  Spider  No.  2 
darted  down  more  impetuously,  just  touched  his 
captive  on  the  opening  behind  her  neck,  and  then 
trotted  back  into  his  parlour.  Whenever  I  took  his 
fly  out  of  the  web  she  shook  herself  and  for  a  short 
time  seemed  little  the  worse,  but  in  five  minutes  she 
was  lying  on  her  side  paralysed,  and  in  ten  stretched 
out  on  her  back,  perfectly  dead.  I  wonder  if  the 
illustrious  arachnologist  referred  to  above  could  in- 
form, me  if  the  habitual  shedder  of  venom,  or  the 
habitual  expender  of  network,  does  the  more  exhaust- 
ing work,  and  which  is  the  longer  lived  creature  of 
the  two.  I  may  add,  as  I  am  going  on  from  spiders 
to  wasps,  that  the  spider,  when  he  encounters  one  of 
those  formidable  insects,  would  be  just  as  well  pleased 
if  he  would  imitate  the  priest  and  the  Levite  and 
*  pass  by  on  the  other  side.'  For  a  wasp  when 
caught  prepares  for  action  at  once,  by  moving  his 
sting  backwards  and  forwards  into  various  positions 
—all  intended  to  meet  the  spider  coming  down  ;  but 
the  spider,  whether  of  the  first  class-  or  the  second, 
'  is  Yorkshire  too/  and  won't  come  down  at  all  till 
his  unwelcome  prisoner  is  starved  into  helplessness — 
a  waste  of  time  inconvenient  to  both.  I  was  once 
in  a  kitchen  garden,  fighting  against  a  swarm 
of  wasps  that  infested  a  plum  tree.  I  struck  and 
hurt  one  without  killing  him,  and  he  fell  into  a  large 
spider's  web  spread  out  below.  To  my  surprise  a 
fellow- wasp  instantly  flew  down  to  his  rescue.  He 
poised  himself  close  to  the  web,  whilst  his  wings 


154  'LETTERS  ON  HISTORY' 

worked  with  a  sort  of  thrill,  till  they  became  an 
indistinct  and  invisible  glitter.  He  was  obviously 
taking  care  of  himself,  not  an  easy  thing  to  do,  as  all 
the  time  he  kept  striking  deft  and  rapid  blows  at  the 
threads  that  held  his  friend.  Finally  he  cut  him  out, 
and  the  poor  devil  fell  down  to  die  upon  the  ground. 
I  was  so  much  struck  with  this  evidence  of  a  heart,  as 
well  as  of  brain,  in  the  case  of  wasps,  that  I  not  only 
spared  the  V.C.  wasp  himself,  but  also  the  rest  of  the 
troop,  and  left  the  plums  to  their  fate. 

In  confirmation  of  the  fact  that  wasps  do  possess 
understanding  and  are  capable  of  being  taught,  I 
will  quote  a  curious  extract  from  one  of  Bolingbroke's 
'  Letters  on  History.'  He  is  speaking  of  the  strange 
causes  that  lift  men  to  power  under  absolute  mon- 
archies. After  contemptuously  dismissing  Turkey, 
he  proceeds  thus  :  '  In  France  indeed,  though  an 
absolute  government,  things  go  a  little  better.  Arts 
and  sciences  are  encouraged,  and  here  and  there  an 
example  may  be  found  of  one  who  has  risen  by  some 
extraordinary  talents,  amidst  innumerable  examples 
of  men  who  have  arrived  at  the  greatest  honours,  and 
highest  posts,  by  no  other  merit  than  that  of  assiduous 
fawning  attendances,  or  skill  in  some  despicable 
puerile  amusement,  in  training  wasps,  for  instance,  to 
take  regular  flights  like  hawks,  and  stoop  at  flies.' 
I  suppose  his  correspondent  knew  to  whom  he  was 
alluding — I  don't.  At  present  this  form  of  falconry 
is,  I  should  think,  a  lost  art.  Perhaps  Sir  John 
Lubbock,  our  nearest  modern  approach  to  a  Beel- 


MR.   COTTON  155 

zebub,1   when   his   own    special   insects    happen   to 
leave  him  a  moment's  leisure,  might  think  it  worth 


reviving. 


At  Christ  Church,  not  in  my  time,  but  a  year  or 
two  afterwards,  Cotton,  one  of  our  distinguished 
Eton  men,  a  Newcastle  scholar,  thought  proper  to 
adapt  the  rural  economy  of  the  Fourth  Georgic  to 
Peckwater,  the  subdivision  of  Christ  Church  where 
he  lived.  He  devoted  himself  assiduously  to  bees, 
and  troubled  his  contemporaries  (so  they  said  at  least) 
with  continual  buzzings  and  an  occasional  sting.  In 
these  cases  he  always  denied  stoutly  that  his  bees 
were  in  fault,  and  once  when  Dean  Gaisford,  having 
sent  for  him,  told  him  plainly  that  his  bees  must  be 
sent  away  because  a  gentleman  commoner  had  just 
been  stung  in  Tom  Quad,  he  replied  instantly  :  '  Mr. 
Dean,  I  assure  you  that  you  are  doing  us  a  great  in- 
justice. I  know  that  bee  well  ;  he  is  not  mine  at  all, 
but  belongs  to  Mr.  Bigg  of  Merton.' 

My  cousin,  Henry  Milner,  a  passionate  entomo- 
logist, who  crowned  himself  with  glory  by  discovering 
in  Ireland  a  moth  hitherto  unknown,  was  walking  with 
me  in  Richmond  Park,  when  a  bird  made  a  dash  at 
some  passing  insect  and  knocked  it  over.  Henry 
Milner  rushed  to  pick  it  up,  and  then  cried  out  joy- 
fully :  *  By  Jove  !  here  is  the  very  beetle  I've  been 
looking  after,  without  finding  one,  for  seven  years.'' 
The  creature,  as  far  as  I  can  recollect,  was  a  modified 

1  I  don't  mean  to  be  uncivil,  but  he  is  certainly  the  Lord,  if  not  of 
flics,  at  least  of  bees  and  ants. 


156  IRISH  DIAMOND 

stag  beetle  with  yellow  lines  about  it.  It  was  fortu- 
nate that  this  piece  of  luck  fell  to  an  expert  and  a 
collector.  It  would  completely  have  been  thrown  away 
upon  me  as  upon  most  other  people. 

To  pass  from  entomology  to  mineralogy.  Horace 
Brooke,  who  is  married  to  a  young  cousin,  or  rather 
(if  I  may  adopt  an  expression  sometimes  used  which 
points  out  the  relationship  more  distinctly),  Welsh 
niece  of  mine,  told  me  of  an  odd  thing  that  once 
happened  to  his  mother,  Mrs.  Brooke.  The  family 
residence  is  on  the  banks  of  Lough  Earn,  and  there, 
as  elsewhere  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales,  pearls 
of  more  or  less  merit  are  not  uncommon.  Mrs. 
Brooke  took  to  collecting  them,  and  children  from  the 
surrounding  villages  got  into  the  habit  of  bringing 
any  that  were  picked  up  near,  receiving  in  return  a 
shilling  or  two  for  their  find.  One  day  a  little  girl 
arrived  from  a  greater  distance  than  usual,  offering 
not  a  pearl  but  a  pebble.  Mrs.  Brooke,  who  was  only 
seeking  after  pearls,  declined  to  buy  it.  Shortly  after- 
wards the  butler,  a  good-natured  man,  came  up 
and  suggested  she  should  change  her  mind.  '  The 
little  girl,'  he  said,  '  has  had  a  very  long  walk,  and  is 
crying  bitterly  at  having  to  go  home  empty-handed.' 
'  Oh,  very  well/  said  Mrs.  Brooke,  '  take  the  stone 
and  give  the  child  what  she  asks  for  it.'  This  he  did. 
A  month  or  two  afterwards,  a  friend  of  theirs,  a  great 
traveller,  who  knew  South  America  well,  after  ogling 
the  pebble  for  some  time  suddenly  broke  out  thus  : 
*  Do  you  know,  if  I  were  in  Brazil,  I  should  be  certain 


(LESAR  AND  BRITISH  PEARLS  157 

that  in  that  bit  of  stone  you  had  got  hold  of  a  real 
diamond/  The  bit  of  stone  was  submitted  to  a  com- 
petent jeweller  in  Dublin,  who  entirely  confirmed  this 
1  tale  of  a  traveller  ; '  and  the  Lough  Earn  pebble  is 
now  one  of  Mrs.  Brooke's  diamond  rings.  Unluckily, 
all  traces  of  the  little  girl  and  her  whereabouts  had 
been  lost ;  she  may  for  aught  I  know  to  the  contrary, 
have  been  a  fairy  in  disguise,  so  that  no  inquiry  could 
be  made  as  to  whether  stones  of  the  same  kind  had  been 
found  in  the  neighbourhood  before  or  since.  If  Mr. 
Gladstone  could  introduce  diamond  fields  into  Ireland 
as  well  as  Land  Acts,  both  Ireland  and  England  migrht 

'  O  O 

be  all  the  better  for  this  new  opening.  I  do  not  say 
that  there  is  anything  impossible  in  the  supposition 
that  native  diamonds  may  be  hidden  in  Ireland, 
though  it  would  surprise  me  to  hear  that  the  dis- 
covery was  one  of  any  great  value.  There  is  a  French 
rivulet  somewhere,  in  the  sands  of  which  Oriental 
rubies  of  good  quality  have,  I  believe,  been  found  now 
and  again,  and  in  the  waters  of  the  Upper  Loire  there 
certainly  are  or  were  sapphires.  I  can  only  hope 
that  if  any  steps  should  be  taken  in  this  direction,  we 
may  not  be  disappointed  in  our  diamonds  as  Cajsar 
must  have  been  in  our  pearls.  Some  tradition  about 
the  British  pearl  was  one  of  the  lures  that  drew  him  on 
to  the  first  invasion  of  the  country,  and  there  is  some- 
thing touching  in  his  sulky  tone  when  he  tells  us 
that  they  are  all  '  lividi  et  subfusci  coloris.'  In  fact, 
like  everything  else  in  this  world,  as  Solomon  would 
have  said,  they  turned  out  to  be  '  vanity  and  vexation 


158  CAESAR'S  SULKINESS 

of  spirit/  To  have  organised  a  costly  expedition,  to 
have  killed  your  thousands,  and  burnt  ancient  cities  to 
the  ground,  yea,  more  than  that,  to  have  flung  away 
precious  Roman  lives  that  might  have  been  useful  to 
him  on  the  edge  of  the  Rubicon  for  the  sake  of '  livid 
and  subfusc  pearls,'  pearls  only  fit  to  '  cast  before 
swine,'  must  indeed  have  been  a  bitter  disappointment. 
However,  he  got  his  pearls — just  as  Esau  before  him 
got  his  pottage — and  if  both  gentlemen  afterwards 
grudged  the  cost,  that  is  their  business  and  not  ours. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

The  first  University  boat-race — Boat  Lloyd's  method  with  the  Dons — 
My  adventure  with  a  Duchess — Winchester  cricketers — Lord  Byron 
as  a  cricketer — Introduction  to  Wordsworth — Third  reading  of  the 
first  Reform  Bill — Mr.  Gladstone  an  advocate  for  rotten  boroughs 
— Principal  speakers  in  the  House  of  Commons — Lord  Stanley — 
Whittle  Harvey— Sir  Robert  Peel— O'Connell—  Shell— Macaulay— 
Matthew  Arnold — Grattan's  failure  as  an  after-dinner  speaker. 

DURING  my  undergraduateship,  the  first  boat-race 
between  the  two  universities  was  fought  out  at  Hen- 
ley-on- Thames.  Oxford  won,  and  that  with  seven 
oars  only  against  eight.1  We  had,  I  need  hardly 
say,  no  electric  telegraph,  no  railway  even  between 
Henley  and  Oxford,  then,  so  that  the  news  of  our 
victory  was  brought  to  us,  as  a  friend  of  mine  rushed 
into  my  room  and  told  me,  by  a  *  messenger  upon  a 
sweating  hack.'  Whether  the  change  of  scene,  and 
the  sham  excitement  of  the  London  mob,  covered 
with  dark  blue  and  light  blue  ribbon,  has  improved 
the  character  of  the  struggle,  I  doubt. 

One  of  my  companions  in  Mr.  Williams's  pupil- 
room  (when  he  could  be  caught,  that  is  to  say)  was 
a  powerful,  handsome  young  man  known  as  Boat 
Lloyd.  He  was  distinguished  among  our  Christ 
Church  crew  upon  the  river,  but  in  anything  except 
rowing  was  quite  unable  to  keep  time.  Still  his  good 

1  This,  I  am  told,  is  a  mistake.      I  probably  was  at  Oxford  in 
1843,  when  the  news  came,  as  a  Fellow  of  All  Souls. 


160  BOAT  LLOYD 

looks  and  good  temper  were  enough  to  make  him 
popular  with  the  authorities,  and  he  used  to  glide  out 
of  scrapes  with  an  easy  dexterity  and  presence  of 
mind  that  every  now  and  then  left  me  rather  envious 
of  him.  Once  I  remember  we  were  both  detained 
after  a  lecture  which  he  had  honoured  by  attending, 
to  answer  for  our  separate  delinquencies.  He  was 
called  upon  to  face  the  enemy  first.  '  Mr.  Lloyd,'  it 
was  asked  of  him  by  the  puzzled  Williams,  '  what  are 
we  to  do  with  you  ?  You  won't  come  to  lecture  or 
to  chapel  ;  we  set  you  impositions,  you  won't  do 
them  ;  we  send  for  you,  and  you  won't  come  ;  you 
do  come,  and  you  won't  speak.  Again  I  ask,  what 
are  we  to  do  with  you  ?  '  Lloyd  remained  placid  and 
motionless,  with  a  vacant  expression  of  countenance, 
as  if  that  question  wholly  belonged  to  the  College 
officials,  and  stood  before  his  tutor  exactly  as  if  he 
had  been  what  is  now  called  a  *  deaf-mute.'  My  tutor 
was  thoroughly  baffled.  His  interrogative  peroration, 
meant  to  produce  a  great  effect,  had  produced  none  at 
all,  and  yet  Lloyd  was  so  handsome  and  gentleman- 
like that  Williams  could  not  bring  himself  to  be  hard 
upon  him.  Accordingly,  after  a  pause,  he  gathered 
himself  together,  like  a  stumbling  horse,  and  stam- 
mered out,  '  Well,  well,  I  suppose  we  must  give  you 
another  chance.'  When  he  heard  this,  the  culprit 
turned  upon  his  heel  and  went  his  way.  I  then 
took  the  scolding  I  had  earned  after  my  own  fashion, 
and  overtaking  Lloyd,  remarked  to  him,  '  You  have 
a  curious  way  of  dealing  with  our  friend  yonder/ 


RETURN  FROM  DINNER  161 

'Yes,'  he  replied,  'I  have  carefully  considered  the 
matter  ;  and  after  trying  various  methods  with  the 
don,  have  come  to  this  conclusion,  that  passive  resis- 
tance answers  the  best. 

I  myself  seldom  troubled  the  Isis  except  for 
bathing  purposes,  when  I  usually  sculled  down  to 
one  of  the  '  lashers,'  as  they  are  called,  and  back 
again.  To  boating  I  preferred,  as  a  rule,  walking 
with  Mr.  Gladstone,  or  riding  with  Hope,  Henry 
Denison,  and  the  present  Sir  Thomas  Acland. 
Being  anything  but  a  good  horseman,  I  came  often 
enough  to  grief.  Once,  funnily  enough,  I  was  staying 
up  during  the  long  vacation  to  read,  or  to  put  it 
more  truthfully,  with  a  view  of  reading.  I  went 
over  one  day  to  dine  with  Black  Saunders,  after- 
wards the  Charterhouse  head-master,  and  finally  Dean 
of  Peterborough.  He  was  then,  unless  I  am  mis- 
taken, acting  in  someone  else's  stead  as  vicar  of 
Cuddesden.  I  left  the  house,  and  the  night  looked 
very  dark,  but  I  was  mounted  on  Duchess,  a  charming 
hack,  hired  by  me  whenever  I  could  get  her,  and  so 
I  trotted  off  merrily  enough.  Now  I  trusted  impli- 
citly in  Duchess,  but  did  not  know  that  she  was 
rapidly  going  blind.  Duchess  again  trusted  im- 
plicitly in  me,  not  knowing  that  I  was  pretty  well 
blind  already.  We  therefore  trotted  along,  danger- 
ously secure  in  our  common  ignorance  of  each  other's 
shortcomings.  I  fancied  that  I  saw  a  patch  of 
thicker  gloom  just  ahead,  but  I  said  to  myself,  'If 
there  is  anything  Duchess  will  take  care.'  Duchess 


162  DUCHESS  AND  THE  BLACK  DONKEY 

very  likely  echoed  my  thought,  and  meditated  in  her 
own  mind,  '  If  there  is  anything  Mr.  Doyle  will  look 
to  it.'  Anyhow  we  came  at  once,  without  warning, 
upon  a  black  donkey,  roped  to  a  tree  in  the  hedge- 
row, and  lying  comfortably  across  the  road.  The 
brute,  on  being  disturbed,  rose  up  suddenly  just 
under  Duchess's  nose.  What  she  exactly  did  I 
never  knew,  but  I  found  myself  flat  on  my  back 
several  yards  off.  Luckily,  however,  I  was  then 
light  and  muscular,  and  so  got  no  hurt.  Luckily, 
also,  Duchess  being  desperately  frightened  had  not 
pluck  enough  left  to  gallop  away  to  her  stable,  but 
stood  there,  shaking  like  an  aspen  leaf,  till  I  got 
into  the  saddle  again.  I  then  rode  on  to  Christ 
Church,  if  not  a  sadder,  at  least  a  slower,  and  I  hope 
in  that  slowness  a  wiser  man. 

The  only  other  special  school  event  that  occurs 
to  me  during  these  Eton  and  Oxford  years  was  the 
first  appearance  of  a  Winchester  Eleven  at  Lord's. 
They  took  the  field  first  against  Harrow,  and  then 
against  Eton,  and  smote  them  both  '  hip  and  thigh.' 
The  founder's-kin  scholars  at  Winchester  had  the 
right  to  stay  on,  in  the  hope  of  reaching  New  College 
fellowships,  until  they  were  long  past  twenty,  and 
there  were  two  or  three  of  these  old  boys,  stronger, 
tougher,  and  more  formidable  than  any  of  their 
opponents,  who  played  on  the  Winchester  side. 
Anyhow  the  two  fashionable  schools  were  taken  by 
surprise,  and  had  to  accept  their  defeats  as  they 
might.  This,  as  I  have  said,  was  the  first  time  when 


WINCHESTER  CRICKET — LORD  BYRON          163 

Winchester  entered  the  lists.  The  contests  between 
Eton  and  Harrow,  on  the  other  hand,  though  not 
without  an  interruption  every  now  and  then,  had 
gone  on  for  a  great  number  of  years.  In  one  of  the 
Harrow  Elevens,  Lord  Byron  (the  poet)  found  a  place. 
I  confess  I  cannot  quite  reconcile  his  performances  in 
that  school  match  with  the  account  given  by  Tre- 
lawney  (who  saw  him  after  his  death)  of  the  strange 
deformity  which  must,  one  would  have  supposed, 
have  altogether  crippled  his  legs  and  feet.  As  a 
batsman  he  scored  moderately  ;  that,  if  he  had  a 
'boy  to  run  for  him,  is  not  so  difficult  to  understand, 
but  he  also  figured  as  a  bowler,  and  took  two  or 
three  wickets.  Now,  after  Trelawney's  account  of 
his  bodily  conformation,  this  puzzles  me.  We  know 
that  afterwards  he  took  lessons  in  boxing  from 
Jackson,  and  acquired,  so  at  least  he  says  himself, 
some  skill  in  the  art.  A  wiry  young  fellow,  with 
long  arms,  might,  I  daresay,  without  moving  about 
much,  practise  a  defensive  kind  of  pugilism  well 
enough,  but  a  successful  bowler  ought  to  have  the 
full  use  of  all  his  limbs.  Upon  the  whole,  Trelawney 
must  have  exaggerated  the  matter. 

On  leaving  Oxford,  I  went  to  live  with  my  father 
in  Harley  Street,  with  a  view  to  reading  for  the  Bar. 
Mr.  Gladstone  established  himself  in  the  Albany  as 
a  rising  M.P.,  and  our  intimacy  continued  without 
any  break  or  hitch  in  it.  In  politics,  as  a  strong  Tory, 
I  looked  upon  him  as  the  head  of  my  form,  except 
indeed  that  in  spite  of  my  admiration  for  Cardinal 


164       CHRYSES — ARCHBISHOP  OF  CANTERBURY 

Newman's  character  and  genius,  I  cared  little  or 
nothiDg  for  High  Church  doctrines.  To  them  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  then  devoted,  and  still  apparently 
adheres,  though  I  sometimes  fancy,  when  his  enthu- 
siasm for  Homer  masters  him,  that,  if  he  could 
resuscitate  Chryses,  and  make  him  Apollinaris,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  surrounded  by  a  lot  of 
Homerida3  as  the  raw  material  for  his  canons  or 
prebendaries,  a  church  so  constituted  would  be 
almost  nearer  his  ideal  than  even  the  queen  of  the 
thirty-nine  articles.  He  used  to  give  breakfasts  at 
the  Albany,  which  were  often  important  to  me.  It 
was  then  and  there  that  I  was  first  presented  to  the 
illustrious  Wordsworth.  The  great  poet  sat  in  state, 
surrounded  by  young  and  enthusiastic  admirers. 
His  conversation  was  very  like  the  '  Excursion ' 
turned  into  vigorous  prose.  The  natural  force  fitted 
for  new  poetical  creations  was  there  in  abundance, 
wanting  only  the  '  accomplishment  of  verse.' 

I  met  him  again  at  a  mixed  dinner  party,  where 
he  was  less  at  home.  A  voluble  young  woman  full 
of  animal  spirits,  and  wanting  a  good  deal  more  than 
'  the  accomplishment  of  verse,'  wanting,  for  instance, 
reverence  and  sympathy,  talked  him  down.  So  that 
the  author  of  the  '  Ode  to  Immortality.'  and  of 
'  Tintern  Abbey,'  gradually  became  a  silent  gentle- 
man in  a  black  coat,  eating  an  indifferent  dinner 
like  other  black-coated  gentlemen,  to  my  great  dis- 
appointment. If  we  had  been  dining  at  the  Palace 
of  Truth,  and  my  thoughts  had  passed  into  words,  I 


WORDSWORTH  AND  ROGERS  165 

should  probably,  according  to  strict  law,  have  in- 
curred several  fines,  at  any  rate  I  should  not  have 
pleased  the  lady  in  question.  I  saw  Wordsworth  for 
the  third  and  last  time  at  old  Rogers's  house  in  St. 
James's  Place.  On  that  occasion  there  was  no  disap- 
pointment ;  his  conversation  was  full  of  interest,  and  I 
never  was  so  pleased  with  Rogers  himself  as  then  and 
there.  The  frank  and  deferential  courtesy  which  he 
showed  to  his  eminent  guest,  about  whose  superiority 
to  the  author  of  the  l  Pleasures  of  Memory '  his 
opinion  may  have  been  scarcely  in  unison  with  ours, 
proved,  at  least,  that  if  not  a  great  poet,  he  was 
thoroughly  kind-hearted,  and,  when  he  chose,  a  per- 
fectly high-bred  gentleman.  At  that  same  breakfast  I 
laid  the  foundation  of  one  of  my  most  valued  friend- 
ships, I  mean  the  friendship  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor, 
then  a  very  handsome  young  man,  though  not  quite 
what  he  is  now  at  eighty-four,  the  handsomest  man 
for  his  years  in  all  England.1 

Mr.  Gladstone  soon  made  his  mark  in  the  House 
of  Commons. 

I  went  every  morning  to  my  conveyancer,  William 
Plunket,  giving  him,  I  fear,  but  little  promise  of  ever 
making  my  mark  at  the  Bar.  In  the  meantime  (this, 
however,  was  before  Mr.  Gladstone's  return  for 
Newark)  the  first  Reform  Bill,  having  been  thrown  out 
of  the  Lords  once,  was  passed  and  carried.  After  the 
third  reading,  I  sat  under  the  gallery  one  night,  whilst 

1  Again  I  have  to  remind  my  readers  of  another  loss  to  England  as 
well  as  to  myself. 


166      THIRD  READING  OF  THE  FIRST  REFORM  BILL 

the  condemned  boroughs  in  succession  were  being  led 
out  for  execution  (the  representatives  for  the  City 
of  London,  I  would  remind  my  readers,  until  Lord 
John  Russell  became  one  of  its  members,  were  usually 
blustering  aldermen,  more  distinguished  for  noisy 
Liberalism  than  for  talent  or  refinement).  The 
manner  of  proceeding  was  this.  As  each  borough 
mounted  the  scaffold,  and  was  about  to  breathe  its 
last,  the  sitting  member  felt  bound  to  utter  a  short 
farewell.  If  he  were  a  Liberal,  he  laid  the  helpless 
victim  'avec  effusion,'  as  the  French  say,  on  the 
altar  of  his  country  ;  if  he  were  a  Tory,  he  consigned 
the  Whigs  to  the  hottest  place  known,  in  the  neatest 
parliamentary  language  that  suggested  itself  to  him. 
The  name  of  a  borough  was  read  from,  the  chair.  I 
have  forgotten  what  it  was  ;  let  us  provisionally  call 
it  East  Looe  (though  in  point  of  fact  East  Looe  only 
dated  back  to  the  reign  of  Elizabeth).  A  good- 
looking  young  gentleman,  self-possessed,  self-satisfied, 
with  a  certain  amount  of  that  valuable  property 
known  to  the  gods  as  impudence  and  to  men  as 
cheek,  was  on  his  legs  in  a  moment.  '  The  borough  of 
East  Looe/  he  said,  '  has  been  a  borough  since  the 
days  of  Henry  III.  ;  during  this  long  period  its  re- 
presentatives have  aimed  at  doing  their  duty  to  their 
constituents  and  their  country  in  a  quiet  and  unos- 
tentatious manner,  like  English  gentlemen,  never  in 
a  single  instance  making  themselves  a  spectacle  to 
men  and  angels '  (and  here  he  threw  a  gesture  of  con- 
tempt straight  across  the  house), '  as  the  four  members 


MEMBERS  FOR  THE  CITY   OF  LONDON          167 

for  the  City  of  London  habitually  do.*  The  shaft 
went  home,  the  ministerial  benches  howled  with 
indignation,  and  the  burly  patriots  for  London 
jumped  up  one  after  the  other,  red,  foaming  at  the 
mouth  with  useless  rage.  They  protested  furiously 
against  such  an  insult  to  their  High  Mightinesses, 
on  the  part  of  a  miserable  individual  representing 
nothing  better  than  a  dead  rotten  borough,  but  they 
overlooked  the  fact  that  his  triumph  was  heightened 
exactly  in  proportion  to  their  display  of  wrath,  and 
that  if  they  had  treated  his  impertinence  with  silent 
contempt,  the  arrow  would  have  missed  its  mark. 
He,  in  the  meantime,  sat  with  folded  arms  smiling 
at  his  own  success,  and  undisguisedly  exulting  that 
he  and  his  borough  had  died  game.  •!  looked 
afterwards  in  Hansard,  to  remind  myself  what  that 
borough  was,  and  to  discover,  if  I  could,  the  orator's 
name,  but  Hansard  had  treated  all  proceedings  on 
the  Reform  Bill,  after  the  third  reading,  as  mere 
matters  of  form,  and  not  taken  the  trouble  to  report 
them. 

Only  the  other  day  I  was  amused  to  find  out,  what 
I  might  have  already  known,  if  I  had  paid  steady  atten- 
tion to  the  parliamentary  debates,  that  an  affection  for 
close  boroughs  was  one  of  the  surviving  sparks  of  that 
Toryism,  which  once  burned  so  hotly  in  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's breast.  I  happened  to  be  staying  with  him  at 
Hawarden,  and  formed  one  of  a  party  that  accompanied 
him  to  Chester.  He  went  there  that  he  might  introduce 
Mr.  Lawley,  who  has  since  become  Lord  Wenlock,  to 
12 


168  THE  MAYOR  OF  CHESTER 

his  future  constituents.  I  went  mainly  because  my 
daughter  was  anxious  to  hear  the  great  orator  speak, 
but  I  went,  so  far  as  politics  were  concerned,  as  an 
avowed  enemy,  though  quite  willing  to  listen  to  and 
applaud  my  old  Eton  friend's  eloquence  when  we  got 
there.  The  town  hall  was  crammed  with  an  eager 
mob.  The  crowd  indeed  was  so  numerous  and  so 
closely  packed  together,  that  it  was  hardly  possible  to 
breathe.  The  managers ,  therefore,  j  udged  it  advisable 
to  break  some  small  diamond-paned  windows,  in  order 
to  improve  the  ultra-liberal  atmosphere  of  the  place. 
Before  this  could  be  done,  after  a  short  consultation 
they  decided  that  the  fact  must  be  announced,  lest  a 
sudden  panic  might  be  kindled  amongst  those  dense 
masses,  and  mischief  ensue.  Accordingly  up  rose  the 
Mayor,  a  burly  and  prosperous  gentleman,  and  endea- 
voured to  get  a  hearing,  but  his  intervention  was  ex- 
tremely ill  received.  *  Sit  down — yah !  yah !  yah !  Sit 
down !  Mr.  Gladstone !  Mr.  Gladstone !  We  don't  want 
you,  sit  down,  yah !  Mr.  Gladstone !  Mr.  Gladstone ! 
Sit  down.  Sit  down,  we  don't  want  you ! '  The  Mayor, 
however,  was  not  unequal  to  the  occasion,  and  pounced 
with  dexterous  alertness  upon  a  lull.  '  Don't  bother ! ' 
he  cried  out ;  '  I  don't  want  to  speak,  but  I  have  got 
something  to  say ! ' 

I  have  always  thought  this  the  most  eccentric 
way  of  introducing  a  renowned  speaker  to  his  eagerly 
expectant  audience,  that  has  yet  been  resorted  to, 
and,  what  is  more,  I  believe  that  I  was  the  only  man 
in  the  room,  precisely  because  I  cared  little  for  the 


MR.   GLADSTONE'S  BREVITY  169 

object  of  the  meeting,  who  felt  the  fun  of  the  situa- 
tion. However,  the  purpose  was  answered,  the  win- 
dows were  solemnly  broken,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  rose. 
The  most  important  part  of  his  speech  consisted  in  an 
emphatic  recommendation  to  the  electors  that  they 
should  choose  Mr.  Lawley  because  he  was  young. 
The  one  thing,  he  told  us,  that  was  needed  to  in- 
vigorate and  improve  the  House  of  Commons  was  the 
infusion  of  young  blood.  The  speech  was  in  his  very 
best  manner,  and  it  was  none  the  worse  I  think  be- 
cause he  tried  to  be  shorter  and  compacter  than  usual. 
He  began  his  address,  indeed,  by  informing  us  that 
his  only  object  being  to  present  his  young  friend  and 
relative  to  the  patriots  assembled  below  us,  he  should 
not  detain  them  for  more  than  a  moment  or  so.  My 
daughter's  jaw  dropped  at  once.  She  had  driven  over 
from  Ha  warden,  seven  miles  in  the  rain,  but  it  was  to 
listen  to  the  great  orator,  not  to  hear  Beilby  Lawley 
doing  his  best  to  make  himself  agreeable  to  the  electors 
(though  I  must  say  for  him,  that  in  spite  of  the  enor- 
mous disadvantage  of  having  to  follow  Mr.  Gladstone, 
he  got  through  his  awkward  task,  afterwards,  without 
flinching  or  faltering,  like  a  man  of  sense  and  educa- 
tion). I  consoled  her,  however,  by  pointing  out  that 
possession  is  nine  parts  of  the  law,  that  we  had  got 
the  right  hon.  gentleman  on  his  legs,  and  that  I  would 
give  her  five  shillings  if  he  was  down  under  an  hour. 
Nor  was  he ;  he  spoke  for  exactly  seventy  minutes. 
Nevertheless,  that  opening  promise,  though  certainly 
not  absolutely  fulfilled,  did  not  leave  his  mind  whilst 


170  ROTTEN  BOROUGHS 

he  was  speaking,  so  that  he  avoided  the  one  criticism 
to  which  his  oratorical  style  is  sometimes  open,  namely, 
that  it  would  be  better  if  it  were  more  closely  com- 
pressed. As  we  were  driving  home,  I  said  to  him, 
'  If  you  are  so  anxious  to  have  young  men  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  why  did  you  Liberals  abolish 
the  rotten  boroughs  ? '  He  answered  with  some  heat, 
'I  abolish  the  rotten  boroughs  ?  What  do  you 
mean  ?  Why,  I  was  the  last  man  in  either  House  of 
Parliament  who  has  ventured  to  utter  a  word  in  then: 
behalf.'  This  fact,  which  I  ought  to  have  known  be- 
fore, was  absolutely  true,  and  I  felt  glad  to  hear  him 
say  so,  as,  in  my  judgment,  the  close  borough  system, 
though  mainly  an  accident  resulting  from  the  drifts 
and  changes  of  time,  was  yet  the  happiest  of  accidents, 
quite  the  curiosa  felicitas  of,  alas,  the  old  British 
Constitution.  It  can  now  never  be  restored  ;  that  is 
beyond  even  the  power  of  our  present  Prime  Minister. 
We  shall  get  no  more  Burkes,  Pitts,  and  Foxes,  and 
Homers,  and  Cannings,  and  Mackintoshes,  Macau- 
lays,  and  Gladstones  into  the  House  of  Commons 
along  that  covered  way.  So  that,  if  youth  is  to  get 
a  hearing  at  all,  it  will  be  got  rather  by  echoing  and 
exaggerating  extreme  opinions,  and  not  as  the  reward 
for  any  special  promise  of  talent,  or,  as  of  old,  any 
special  aptitude  for  public  affairs.  Pindar  remarked 
a  certain  number  of  years  ago  (and  it  would  not  be 
amiss  if  we  listened  more  attentively  to  the  words 
which  some  of  those  wise  men  of  former  ages  have 
bequeathed  to  us)  : 


THE  PARLIAMENTARY  SPEAKERS  OF  MY  YOUTH    171 

Easy  indeed  to  shake  a  state, 

That  much  at  least  may  do 
Some  slight  and  worthless  man,  but  great, 

And  tasking  wrestler's  limbs,  the  feat 
To  fix  her  in  her  former  seat 

And  build  the  whole  anew. — Fourth  Pythian. 

The  state  of  England,  God  knows,  has  been  shaken 
all  but  to  pieces.  By  whom  it  will  be  rebuilt,  or 
how,.  I  don't  think  even  Pindar,  if  he  were  raised 
from  the  dead,  could  tell  us. 

For  some  time,  as  I  have  said  above,  both  before 
the  passing  of  the  first  Reform  Bill  and  shortly  after- 
wards, I  went  constantly  to  hear  the  debates.  As, 
however,  I  soon  perceived  that  I  never  should  have 
any  opportunity  of  even  aiming  at  distinction  in  that 
line,  and  had  to  occupy  myself  with  other  matters, 
I  gradually  dropped  the  practice,  but  not  until  I  had 
formed  my  own  opinion  as  to  the  relative  merits  of 
the  most  distinguished  speakers  of  the  time.  The 
only  man,  as  far  as  I  was  concerned,  who  always  took 
the  ache  out  of  my  shoulders  at  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  was  Lord  Stanley,  the  late  Lord  Derby. 
That  this  arose  from  the  actual  impression  of  his  elo- 
quence upon  the  nerves  of  my  brain,  and  not  from 
any  more  indirect  cause,  may  be  inferred  from  the 
fact  that  I  had  no  great  esteem  for  his  statesmanlike 
wisdom,  nor  was  I  particularly  attracted  by  his 
personal  character,  even  after  he  became  a  Tory,  and 
at  that  time  he  belonged  to  the  party  of  innovators 
which  was  odious  to  me  ;  so  that  it  was  his  power  of 


172  LORD  STANLEY— SIR  ROBERT  PEEL 

speech,  and  his  power  of  speech  alone,  which  smoothed 
away  fatigue  and  lifted  me  out  of  myself.  His  great 
opponent  was  Sir  Robert  Peel.  Now,  I  have  always 
heard,  that  properly  to  appreciate  Sir  Robert  Peel,  you 
must  have  been  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  this  no  doubt  was  true  ;  his  knowledge,  his  dex- 
terity, his  tact,  his  powers  of  reasoning,  his  careful 
choice  of  topics  and  the  like,  could  not  be  properly  felt 
and  valued  except  by  those  on  whom  they  were  con- 
stantly acting.  To  me,  a  stranger,  and  therefore  un- 
familiar with  these  continuous  operations  of  his  mind, 
there  was  a  defect  in  his  style  fatal  to  oratorical  excel- 
lence of  the  highest  order  ;  namely,  that  he  wanted 
the  true  inward  impulse  which  kindles  the  speech  into 
greater  power,  as  it  proceeds.  He  began  well  and 
effectively,  but  after  a  time  the  pace  slackened,  the 
middle  part  of  his  speech  might  be  sensible,  might 
even  be  wiser  than  the  opening,  but  the  orator  was 
colder  and  less  interesting  in  point  of  language  and 
manner,  so  that  when  he  worked  himself  round  again 
to  a  brilliant  peroration,  there  was  no  blinking  the 
fact  that  it  had  been  carefully  thought  over,  if  not 
written  beforehand.  Hence  I  always  was  possessed 
with  the  feeling  that  he  got  weaker  instead  of  stronger 
as  he  went  on,  and  had  to  put  some  fresh  tea  in, 
and  fill  up  the  tea-pot  once  or  twice,  before  the  final 
distribution  of  what  he  had  to  give  to  the  world. 

Whittle  Harvey  was  almost  perfect  as  a  speaker, 
both  in  substance  and  in  form.  To  listen  to  him,  you 
would  have  thought  that  he  was  the  vir  pietate  gravis 


WHITTLE  HARVEY  173 

immortalised  by  Virgil.  In  his  famous  duel  with 
Lord  Stanley  about  the  pension  list,  the  opinion  of 
impartial  judges,  unless  my  memory  deceives  me. 
amounted  to  this,  that  although  two  such  antagonists 
had  seldom  tilted  against  each  other  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  Whittle  Harvey  was  not  the  one  who  came 
off  second  best.  There  were,  however,  imputations 
on  his  character,  whether  justly  entertained  or  not  is 
no  business  of  mine ;  these  weighed  him  down  and 
interfered  with  his  parliamentary  advancement.  One 
of  the  most  amusing  legends  of  Lord  Melbourne's 
easy  skill  in  slipping  out  of  a  difficult  position  and 
evading  uncomfortable  responsibilities,  refers  to  this 
public  estimate  of  Whittle  Harvey's  past  career.  He 
had  been  useful  to  the  Government,  he  thought,  and 
was  therefore  entitled  to  some  reward.  A  new  Board, 
I  think  it  had  something  to  do  with  the  regulation 
of  hackney  coaches,  was  set  on  foot,  with  four  com- 
missionerships  attached  to  it.  One  of  these  he 
coveted,  and  for  a  time  was  apparently  encouraged  to 
hope  that  his  wish  might  be  gratified,  but  the  first 
commissioner  was  appointed,  and  he  was  not  Whittle 
Harvey  ;  he  felt  a  little  anxious.  Then  the  second  com- 
missioner was  appointed  ;  again  he  was  not  Whittle 
Harvey  ;  he  became  alarmed.  In  process  of  time,  the 
third  commissioner  was  appointed,  and  still  he  was 
not  Whittle  Harvey ;  he  grew  desperate,  and  rushed 
off  to  Lord  Melbourne  that  he  might  pour  forth  his 
complaints  and  urge  his  claim  before  it  was  too  late. 
Lord  Melbourne  received  him  with  bluff  politeness, 


174      STRANGE  SCENE  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS 

but  quietly  put  him  aside  by  remarking,  apparently 
with  some  little  surprise,  as  if  he  himself  had  no 
opinion  on  the  subject,  '  Why,  you  see  those  d — d 
fellows  say  they  won't  serve  with  you.'  By  the  way, 
in  speaking  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  I  omitted  to  mention 
a  curious  scene  in  the  House  of  Commons  con- 
nected with  him  of  which  I  was  a  spectator.  I  have 
never  seen  it  alluded  to  since,  so  that  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  taken  hold  upon  other  people  as  strongly 
as  it  took  hold  upon  me.  Peel  had  just  risen  to 
speak  (I  should  mention  that  the  event  took  place  in 
the  first  session  of  the  newly  formed  House  of 
Commons),  he  had  just  gone  through  his  usual  trick 
of  exposing  his  white-waistcoated  stomach  to  the 
gaze  of  an  admiring  universe,  when  all  at  once  there 
dashed  out  from  under  the  gallery,  where  we  were 
sitting  together,  a  wild,  haggard  -looking  man,  who 
made  straight  at  him.  Party  feeling  ran  high  at  that 
moment,  and  political  passions  were  strongly  excited. 
A  terrible  flash  of  alarm  swept  through  me,  and  I  said 
hurriedly  to  myself,  '  Gracious  heavens !  another  case 
of  Bellingham  and  Perceval !  God  help  him ! '  The 
intruder,  however,  stopped  short  before  reaching 
Peel,  bowed  to  him  with  elaborate  courtesy,  and  went 
on  thus  :  '  Sir  Robert  Peel,  I  beg  your  pardon,  Mr. 
Speaker,  and  gentlemen  of  the  House  of  Commons,  I 
beg  your  pardon  again,  but  I  am  an  unfortunate 
man  who  has  just  been  poisoned  by  Earl  Grey.'  He 
was  at  once  taken  into  custody,  and  then  O'Connell, 
who  knew  something  about  him,  explained  the  origin 


HOW  MOSES  SHOT  A  PEELER  175 

and  cause  of  his  madness.  He  was  instantly  removed, 
and  the  debate  went  on,  but  ended  flatly,  as  Peel's 
nerves  had  been,  not  unnaturally,  a  good  deal  shaken, 
and  he  was  hardly  up  to  the  mark.  His  antagonists 
also  were  probably  startled  by  the  incident,  just  as  I 
was,  and  so  the  debate  died  off. 

This,  perhaps,  is  as  good  a  place  as  any  other  to 
record  a  thing  which  happened  to  Sir  Robert  Peel 
whilst  Irish  Secretary.  He  was  attending  an  exami- 
nation at  one  of  the  National  Schools,  and  they  put 
him  forward  to  question  the  boys  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. '  Tell  me,'  he  said,  '  what  was  the  reason  why 
Moses  left  the  land  of  Egypt  ?  '  The  young  fellows 
belonging  to  the  first  class  were  not  able  to  answer 
the  question,  but  a  small  boy  behind  them,  shrewd - 
looking  and  bright-eyed,  jumped  up  eagerly  and 
called  out,  '  I  know,  your  honour.'  '  Do  you,  my 
little  friend?  '  said  Peel  ;  '  come  to  the  front  then,  and 
tell  us  all  about  it.'  The  child  obeyed,  and  when  he 
got  to  the  front,  looking  Peel  full  in  the  face,  he  ex- 
plained the  matter  thus  :  '  Plase  yer  honour,  he  shot 
a  Peeler.1  I  need  not  add,  that  though  not  strictly 
accurate  in  point  of  detail,  he  was  substantially  right, 
but  the  manner  in  which  he  managed  to  Paddify 
Egypt,  thus  making  things  easier  to  himself,  is  very 
funny,  though  I  am  afraid  that  this  story  at  present  is 
likely  to  amuse  an  Irish  American  even  more  than  it 
does  us.  There  is  this,  moreover,  to  be  said  in  his 
defence,  that  the  Egyptian  Jews,  unlike  their  succes- 
sors, opened  a  business  career  by  borrowing  and  not 


176  O'CONNELL — SHEIL 

by  lending  ;  they  were  probably,  therefore,  less  unlike 
modern  Irishmen  than  the  Hebrews  of  the  present 
day.  About  the  truth  of  this  history  there  is  no 
doubt  whatever,  as  Sir  Robert  Peel  himself  told  it  to 
David  Dundas. 

Sir  James  Graham  enjoyed  a  great  parliamentary 
reputation,  but  though  able  and  dexterous,  I  always 
thought  him  heavy,  not  to  say  tiresome.  For  a  short 
sudden  speech,  suggested  by  some  casual  incident, 
coming  away  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  there  was 
nobody,  I  think,  equal  to  O'Connell,  but  his  longer 
and  more  heavily  weighted  addresses  were  compa- 
ratively ineffective.  An  Irishman  of  another  kind 
was  Sheil ;  he  never  spoke  without  careful  prepara- 
tion, and  every  sentence  was  beautifully  modelled. 
As  a  whole,  perhaps,  there  was  too  much  glitter  and 
gaudiness,  but  still  his  glowing  fancy  and  great 
rhetorical  skill  bore  down  all  hostile  criticism,  and 
everybody  listened  to  him  as  he  went  on  with 
admiring  expectation.  Unluckily,  both  for  himself 
and  his  hearers,  his  voice  was  detestable — something 
between  the  yell  of  a  peacock  and  the  squeak  of  a 
slate  pencil — so  that  unmixed  pleasure  could  not  be 
enjoyed,  and  you  were  obliged  to  wait  for  the  news- 
papers next  morning  to  understand  how  great  he 
really  was.  I  recollect  being  told  that  his  speeches 
were  concocted  in  a  manner  that  belonged  to  himself 
alone.  His  mind  was  one  of  exuberant  fertility  and 
high  cultivation,  and  his  pen  the  pen  of  a  ready 
writer — so  ready,  indeed,  that  it  flew  over  the  paper 


MACAULAY  177 

without  an  instant's  pause  ;  still,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  he  could  not  trust  himself  to  deliver  an  extem- 
pore speech,  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  did  it  suit  his 
character  to  write  out  a  discourse  exactly,  and  then 
to  learn  it  by  heart  as  a  schoolboy  learns  his  morn- 
ing lesson.  His  plan,  therefore,  was  to  rattle  off  five 
or  six  compositions  on  the  same  subject,  and  then  to 
lean  upon  his  memory,  with  a  confident  hope  that 
out  of  the  five  or  six,  a  sufficient  number  of  meta- 
phors, epigrams,  and  arguments  would  return  upon 
his  mind  to  make  up  one  brilliant  oration. 

Macaulay  I  never  heard  but  once,  but  I  was  for- 
tunate in  my  opportunity  because  it  was  a  speech 
in  which  occurred  the  well-known  adaptation  of 
Jotham's  parable  against  the  men  of  Shechem  in 
the  Book  of  Judges.  Macaulay  was  arguing  that  the 
populace  had  been  suffered  to  fall  under  the  guidance 
of  anarchists  and  demagogues,  because  men  of  talents, 
position,  and  character  left  their  humbler  fellow- 
countrymen  without  light,  leading,  or  advice.  Jotham 
helped  him  to  tell  us  how  *  the  vine  would  not  because 
of  her  vintage,  and  the  fig-tree  would  not  because  of 
her  sweetness,  and  the  olive  would  not  because  of 
her  fatness,  so  the  bramble  was  anointed  king,  and 
out  of  the  bramble  came  the  fire  that  devoured  the 
cedars  of  Lebanon.'  The  sentences  were  so  managed 
as  not  to  be  exactly  a  quotation,  but  practically  they 
were  the  words  of  the  Bible — and  Bible  words  have 
seldom  been  used  with  greater  force  and  effect.  At 
the  same  time,  the  point  of  what  he  said  was  greatly 


178  MACAULAY  AND  ARNOLD 

marred  by  a  mechanical  defect,  which  though  it 
may  seem  trifling  is  nevertheless  of  considerable  im- 
portance. I  mean  that  he  hurried  along  too  fast. 
Of  old  at  Athens,  and  even  now  perhaps  among  the 
southern  nations  of  Europe,  whose  perceptive  facul- 
ties are  supposed  to  be  quicker  and  keener  than  ours, 
this  mistake  may  not  signify  so  much,  but  an  average 
English  intellect  requires  time  to  take  in  and  digest 
what  you  say  to  it.  You  may  speak  with  the  tongue 
of  angels,  or  archangels  if  you  can,  but  unless  your 
sentences  are  allowed  to  sink  gradually  into  the 
minds  of  those  whom  you  address,  they  lose  half 
their  weight  and  influence.  I  believe  Macaulay  after- 
wards recognised  this  fault  of  delivery  in  himself  and 
corrected  the  bad  habit  more  or  less.  Not  that  error 
is  impossible  in  the  other  direction,  far  from  it ;  you 
may  be  too  slow  and  send  your  hearers  to  sleep.  But 
as,  in  most  men,  the  mere  fact  of  getting  upon  your 
legs  in  front  of  a  critical  audience  tends  to  generate 
a  certain  tremulous  irritability,  over-quickness  is 
more  common  than  the  reverse. 

Having  referred  to  Macaulay,  I  cannot  but  express 
my  regret  that  Mr.  Arnold,  whose  influence  on  public 
opinion  in  his  own  line  is  so  great,  so  widely  diffused, 
and,  I  may  add,  so  thoroughly  well  deserved,  should 
always  talk  of  his  distinguished  contemporary  with  a 
certain  harshness,  I  may  almost  say,  with  a  certain 
contempt.  He  looks  upon  him  as  a  sort  of  false 
prophet  in  literature,  to  be  discountenanced  and  con- 
demned by  all  true  believers.  As  an  essayist  and 


'LAYS  OF  ANCIENT  ROME'        179 

rhetorician  I  shall  leave  Macaulay  to  take  care  of  him- 
self, observing  only  that  one-sided  and  prejudiced  as 
he  is,  when  a  one-sided  and  prejudiced  man  speaks 
with  a  tongue  like  his,  he  is  often  worth  listening  to. 
An  advocate  who  puts  forth  any  portion  of  the  truth 
with  extraordinary  spirit  and  strength  teaches  us 
something,  though  his  teaching  may  be  imperfect  and 
indirect.  Take,  for  instance,  a  man  whom  I  accept 
as  a  man  of  higher  and  more  original  genius  than 
Macaulay,  I  mean  Carlyle.  I  doubt  whether  I  have 
agreed  entirely  with  a  single  thing  he  ever  said,  still 
each  of  his  sayings  has  had  an  effect,  and  a  valuable 
effect  too,  upon  my  intellect,  because  it  gives  a  new 
aspect  to  life,  because  it  introduces  into  my  mind  fresh 
elements  to  think  over,  and  because  it  lends  a  breadth 
to  old  opinions,  which,  if  not  absolutely  false  and  mis- 
taken, are  yet,  in  their  original  form,  too  narrow  and 
conventional  to  embrace  the  whole  truth.  Something 

o 

of  the  same  kind,  I  think,  may  be  urged  on  behalf  of 
the  robust  Whig  Philistine  against  whom  Mr.  Arnold, 
like  Lord  Burleigh  in  the  '  Critic/  shakes  his  saga- 
cious head.  It  is,  however,  with  regard  to  the  '  Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome'  that  I  feel  myself  compelled  to  explain 
at  greater  length  why  I  differ  from  Mr.  Arnold.  I 
am  compelled  to  do  this,  because,  not  content  with 
judging  them  from  his  own  point  of  view,  he  insists 
that  everybody  should  prostrate  himself  before  his 
critical  Ukase  on  the  subject.  He  makes  admiration 
of  them,  as  he  tells  us,  a  test  ;  and  measures  people's 
literary  incapacity  by  the  degree  of  their  approval. 


180  THE  HARVESTS  OF  ARRETIUM 

Now,  as  I  think  the  '  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome '  a  very 
good  piece  of  work,  deserving  all  the  popularity  that 
it  has  earned,  I  should  look  upon  myself  as  a  coward 
if  I  declined  to  accept  this  challenge.  Nobody,  least 
of  all  Macaulay  himself,  has  ever  put  them  forward  as 
constituting  a  great  poem,  still  his  poetical  powers, 
little  as  he  cultivated  them,  are  not  inconsiderable. 
They  are  quite  enough,  when  supported  by  the  vivid 
and  accurate  knowledge  of  the  topics  he  is  handling, 
and  fired  by  his  genuine  historical  enthusiasm,  to 
create  a  poem  good  of  its  kind  and  in  its  degree  ;  a 
poem,  moreover,  which,  unlike  many  more  ambitious 
compositions,  is  alive  and  not  dead.  He  has  at  any 
rate  succeeded  in  making  Roman  heroes  and  Roman 
traditions  household  words  at  the  average  English 
fireside,  and  it  is  not  everyone  who  could  have  done 
that.  When  I  say  that  his  poetic  powers  are  not 
inconsiderable,  I  will  just  quote  one  passage  out  of 
many,  moving  before  my  memory,  to  prove  it,  and  I 
think  most  people  will  agree  with  me  that  the  picture 
presented  to  us  in  the  following  lines — 

The  harvests  of  Arretium, 

This  year,  old  men  shall  reap  ; 
This  year,  young  boys  in  TJmbro 

Shall  plunge  the  struggling  sheep  ; 
And  in  the  vats  of  Luna, 

This  year,  the  must  shall  foam 
Round  the  white  feet  of  laughing  girls 

Whose  sires  have  marched  to  Rome. 

could  not  have  risen  upon  the  mind  of  anyone  who 
was  not  a  true  poet.  Mr.  Arnold  begins  by  quoting  a 


SHORTCOMINGS  OF  ALL  CRITICS  181 

rather  wooden  phrase,  'to  every  man  upon  this  earth, 
death  cometh  soon  or  late,'  and  announces  to  his 
fellow-creatures  that  the  words  give  him  positive 
pain  every  time  he  meets  them.  Now  we  must  all 
sympathise  with  the  real  Prince  Critic,  when  he 
hurts  his  delicate  fingers,  though  shielded  by  a  velvet 
glove,  against  this  rough  knot  in  Macaulay's  bay- 
tree,  just  as  we  sorrow  for  the  real  Princess  in 
the  fairy  tale  when  she  is  galled  by  that  intruding 
pea,  through  the  thirty  mattresses  lying  between  her 
and  it.  Still  a  critic  liable  to  be  mortally  wounded 
by  a  rub  of  that  kind,  or  to  '  die  of  a  rose  in  aromatic 
pain  *  when  his  sympathies  are  awakened,  is  of  too 
ethereal  and  sylphlike  a  texture  for  this  work-day 
world.  We  take  a  poem  as  we  take  a  wife,  'for 
richer  for  poorer,  for  better  for  worse ; '  a  beautiful 
woman  is  not  to  be  despised  because  she  has  a  freckle 
or  a  mole  or  two  on  her  face  (nay,  Lord  Bacon  says 
that  such  slight  deviations  from  an  implacable  per- 
fection, only  lend  a  life  and  character  of  their  own  to 
her  charms),  and  a  poem  in  the  same  manner  must 
be  judged  as  a  whole;  we  put  aside  trifling  defects, 
indeed,  what  poet  is  without  such  faults  ?  Milton 
we  often  find  as  heavy  as  lead  (or  gold  if  you 
please).  Even  Shakspeare  errs  not  unfrequently 
in  point  of  taste  and  style.  How  does  Mr.  Arnold 
confront  the  Mermaid  in  Campbell's  '  Battle  of  the 
Baltic  '  ?  Passage  after  passage  in  '  Peter  Bell '  must 
make  him  shudder.  Indeed  a  faultless  poet  is  seldom 
a  poet  of  the  highest  rank  j  he  is  apt  to  want  spon- 


182  GOETHE  ON  DANTE 

taneity  and  ease,  to  ride  his  Pegasus  as  it  were  too 
much  upon  the  curb,  whilst  if  every  bad  line  in  every 
great  writer  acts  upon  Mr.  Arnold's  critical  skin 
like  a  mustard  leaf,  what  pangs  is  he  not  daily  under- 
going ?  Poor  man,  under  such  perpetual  afflictions, 
his  life  must  be  one  long  agony.  To  speak  with 
perfect  frankness,  it  seeems  to  me  that  Mr.  Arnold's 
one  weak  point  as  critic  is  a  tendency  to  over-fasti- 
diousness. Now,  in  my  opinion,  the  critic  ought  not 
to  be  over-fastidious,  but  to  take  broad,  bold,  and 
tolerant  views  of  whatever  comes  under  his  ken,  and 
to  possess  the  gift  of  seeing  and  feeling  in  a  proper 
degree  the  merit  of  everything  that  is  good  of  its  kind. 
But  it  is  perhaps  foolish  to  expect  that  a  writer  of 
Mr.  Arnold's  stamp,  naturally  attracted  as  he  is  by 
those  subtler  and  deeper  qualities  to  be  found  only  in 
rare  poets  and  thinkers,  should  sympathise  strongly 
with  plain  straightforward  ballads  such  as  Macaulay 
aimed  at  producing.  If  I  may  borrow  a  metaphor 
from  the  cricket  field,  in  criticism  as  in  other  matters 
'  no  one  is  equally  good  all  round.'  Even  men  of 
the  highest  and  widest  intellects,  men  reckoned  all 
but  infallible,  startle  us  every  now  and  then  by  the 
strangeness  of  their  paradoxes.  Hear  what  Goethe 
says  of  the  'Divina  Commedia.'  'The  Inferno  abomi- 
nable, the  Purgatorio  doubtful,  and  the  Paradiso  tire- 
some/ I  daresay  Goethe  did  not  always  cherish  a 
notion  like  that ;  it  may  have  been  the  result  of  a 
fleeting  irritation,  it  may  have  been  a  gust  of  repug- 
nance roused  up  by  Dante's  harsh  and  gloomy  temper, 


'THE  CHRISTIAN  YEAR'  183 

a  temper  so  opposite  to  his  own  ;  but  still  that  is  what 
he  said,  and  it  remains  on  record  against  him. 

Along  a  road  where  Goethe  trips  and  stumbles,  who 
can  hope  at  all  tunes  to  stand  upright  and  tread  surely  ? 
As  for  me,  if  I  could  only  find  shelter  under  a  corner 
of  Goethe's  magnificent  storm-proof  umbrella1  against 
the  pelting  scoffs  to  which  I  might  expose  myself  I 
should  have  a  dozen  pestilent  heresies  to  confess,  and 
I  believe  that  most  students  of  literature,  once  in  the 
confessional,  would  do  much  the  same  thing  if  they  only 
had  the  courage  to  speak  out.  There  is  '  The  Chris- 
tian Year '  for  instance.  Who  will  dare  to  say  that 
'The  Christian  Year '  is  not  a  true,  perhaps  a  great 
poetical  work  ?  It  has  carried  hope  and  happiness 
and  support  to  hearts  that  cannot  be  numbered  ;  but 
it  says  little  or  nothing  to  me.  Poetry  has  been 
somewhere  or  other  called  '  idealised  utterance.'  I  do 
not  quite  understand  this  definition  (definitions  of 
poetry  indeed  are  always  more  or  less  unintelligible), 
but  accepting  it  as  an  approach  to  the  truth,  and 
judging  Keble  by  that  definition,  I  should  say  that 
he  commonly  stammered  rather  than  spoke.  But  yet 
his  power  of  influencing  beautiful  souls,  and  filling 
them  with  unfading  joy  and  peace,  is  so  great  a  gift, 
that  to  talk  of  him  without  due  reverence  seems 
something  like  a  blasphemy.  This  heresy,  however,  is 
a  mild  one  compared  with  another  which  I  am  reluc- 

1  Aa  this  umbrella  was  put  up  long  before  Mr.  Gladstone's,  and  as 
my  manuscript  has  been  read  by  many  friends,  I  see  no  reason  for 
taking  it  down. 
13 


184  '  LYCIDAS ' 

tantly  bracing  myself  up  to  acknowledge, — here 
Goethe's  protecting  umbrella  becomes  more  necessary 
than  ever.  Mr.  Arnold,  like  everyone  else  who  speaks 
with  authority  on  such  matters,  is  horrified  when  Dr. 
Johnson  bluntly  condemns  '  Lycidas.'  Now  I  could 


times  without  tiring  of  them.  *  Comus,'  *  Paradise 
Regained,'  the  other  secondary  poems,  all  of  them, 
give  me  great  pleasure,  though  in  different  degrees  ; 
but  as  for  '  Lycidas,'  well,  I  say  ditto  to  old  Sam.  In 
the  first  place  the  kind  of  idyll  is  not  to  my  taste.  If 
a  poet  really  sorrows  over  the  death  of  a  friend  to 
that  degree  that  he  cannot,  as  a  relief  to  the  soul, 
refrain  from  pouring  out  his  sorrow  in  song,  I  think 
his  utterance  should  be  natural  and  straightforward  ; 
he  should  not  speak  in  a  falsetto  tone,  or  overlay  his 
theme  with  classical  affectations.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  the  grief  is  only  a  half  grief,  conjured  up  by  the 
imagination  to  play  with  like  a  toy,  then,  in  my 
opinion,  the  bard  had  better  hold  his  tongue. 

In  the  second  place,  the  jumbling  together  of 
Christian  and  heathen  traditions  jars  upon  me  just 
as  it  jarred  upon  the  tough  old  dictionary-maker. 
Nay,  besides  all  this,  '  Lycidas  '  appears  to  me  not  so 
much  a  spontaneous  outburst  as  a  self-appointed  task. 
One  of  Milton's  editors  tells  us  that  Mr.  King's 
friends — Milton  being  one  of  those  friends — agreed  to 
write,  and  bind  up  together,  a  lot  of  verses  on  his 
death,  but  that  when  '  Lycidas '  made  its  appearance, 
it  proved  so  much  more  important  than  all  the  other 


I  SAY  DITTO   TO   SAM  JOHNSON  185 

poems  put  together,  that  it  was  withdrawn  from  the 
book,  to  be  afterwards  separately  published  ;  and  even 
now,  I  think,  traces  of  the  original  business-like 
arrangement  are  to  be  found  in  the  elegy  as  we  have 
it.  l  He  must  not  welter  to  the  parching  wind,  with- 
out the  meed  of  some  melodious  tear' — looks  as  if 
Milton  (Mr.  John)  was  working  himself  up  towards 
the  fulfilment  of  a  promise,  though  he  found  it  some- 
what irksome  to  fulfil,  and  the  very  last  line,  '  To- 
morrow to  fresh  fields  and  pastures  new '  seems  to- 
me as  if  the  author  were  muttering  to  himself  '  Thank 
God !  that  job  is  off  my  mind.  Old  Hobson  starts 
for  Cambridge  to-morrow  morning ;  he  shall  hand 
over  my  manuscript  to  the  other  fellows,  and  joy  go> 
with  it.1 

Still,  when  I  say  this,  am  I  to  set  myself  in  oppo- 
sition to  all  the  great  critics,  and  to  pronounce  a 
poem  (which  Wordsworth  himself  magnanimously 
admitted  to  be  all  but  equal  to  his  own  *  Laodamia '),  a 
poem  without  value,  because  it  does  not  happen  to 
touch  my  innermost  feelings  ?  Far  from  it ;  I  assume 
that  certain  imaginative  nerves  and  fibres  to  which 
'  Lycidas '  appeals  are  wanting  to  me,  as  they  were 
wanting  to  the  founder  of  the  club  at  which  Mr. 
Arnold  and  I  both  dine  as  members.  This  blank  in 
nature,  like  my  short-sight  and  Dr.  Johnson's  short- 
sight,  is  not  to  be  filled  up  by  pretending  to  see  what 
I  do  not  see,  I  therefore  sorrowfully  '  pass  by  on  the 
other  side,'  leaving  the  immortal  idyll  for  those  who 
are  more  worthy  of  it,  and  take  my  delight  elsewhere. 


186  MACAULAY  MAY  STILL  BE  BOUGHT 

Now '  Horatius '  is  not '  Lycidas,'  nor  am  I  Mr.  Arnold. 
Still,  I  think,  so  far  as  the  '  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome ' 
are  concerned,  I  am  one  with  the  majority.  The 
public  on  this  point  agrees  with  me,  and  not  with 
him.  Is  it  not  therefore  possible  that  while  I  am 
too  shallow  and  commonplace  to  appreciate  Milton's 
masterpiece  as  it  deserves,  he,  on  the  other  hand,  may 
err  from  over-refinement,  and  blind  himself  to  the 
real  merits  of  a  popular  work,  because  those  merits 
are  not  characterised  by  what  he  would  perhaps  call 
sufficient  distinction.  If  he  will  reconsider  his  judg- 
ment from  this  point  of  view  it  is  well,  and  if  not, 
the  executors  and  representatives  of  Macaulay  may 
draw  this  consolation,  even  out  of  Mr.  Arnold's 
hostile  verdicts  ;  though  he  stand  aloof  himself,  he 
still  permits  the  ordinary  Christians  and  eaters  of 
beef  to  read,  and,  what  is  more  important,  to  buy, 
this  Philistine  publication.  It  is  only  the  select  few, 
the  initiated,  those  whom  Mr.  Arnold,  borrowing  a 
phrase  from  the  Hebrew  prophet  whom  he  has  lately 
taken  under  his  wing,  might  like  to  call  the '  Remnant,' 
who  are  directed  by  their  critical  seer  to  abstain 
from  an  intellectual  food  denounced  by  him  as 
1  common  and  unclean.' 

I  have  been  led  a  long  way  out  of  my  road  by  a 
natural  desire  to  claim  justice  for  Macaulay,  justice 
at  least,  if  the  literary  rulers  of  this  generation  are 
not  disposed  to  grant  him  anything  more  than  strict 
justice  ;  and  I  must  hope  that  my  readers  will  sympa- 
thise with  me  when  they  reflect  how  it  wounds  a 


AIR.  GLADSTONE  AS  AN  AFTER-DINNER  SPEAKER  187 

man  to  see  the  idols  of  his  youth  treated  as  Dagons, 
and  ruthlessly  broken  up,  because  as  the  years  change 
the  spirit  of  a  national  literature  may  change  with 
them,  and  new  fashions  become  predominant  for  a 
season.  After  all,  those  now  in  the  ascendent  are  not 
the  last  of  the  human  race  any  more  than  Macaulay 
was,  and  the  '  whirligig  of  time '  may  bring  about  his 


revenges. 


To  return  however  to  the  point  I  was  discussing 
some  pages  back,  I  mean  the  influence  of  manner 
and  temperament  upon  oratory.  I  once  asked  Mr. 
Gladstone  whether  after  his  long  years  of  practice,  he 
ever  felt  nervous  now  on  rising  to  speak.  '  Not  on 
political  questions,'  was  his  answer,  '  but  if  I  am  called 
upon  to  deliver  what  the  Greeks  used  to  call  an 
Epideictic  Oration,  as  at  the  Literary  Fund  dinner  or 
the  like,  I  am  often  somewhat  troubled  at  first.'  As 
far  as  he  is  concerned,  whatever  his  inner  feelings 
may  be,  this  motion  along  a  groove  which  is  more  or 
less  an  unusual  one  does  not  visibly  affect  him,  but 
there  are  cases  on  record  in  which,  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances, the  result  has  been  strange  and  perplex- 
ing. My  old  great-uncle,  Sir  John  Doyle,  once  told 
me  that  when  Grattan  transferred  himself  from 
Dublin  to  London,  he  was  appointed  to  organise  a 
great  Irish  dinner  for  a  set  of  London  Irishmen,  and 
thus  to  give  their  eminent  fellow-countryman  a  fitting 
welcome.  When  the  day  came,  Sir  John  had  to 
propose  his  health  with  all  the  honours.  Whilst  he 
was  upon  his  legs,  Grattan,  sitting  by  his  side,  grew 


188  WHY  GRATTAN  FAILED 

fidgety  and  anxious  in  the  most  incredible  manner. 
He  kept  asking  Sir  John  '  What  am  I  to  say  ?  What 
am  I  to  do?  '  and  so  on.  Sir  John  stopped  between 
his  sentences  to  reassure  him,  naturally  pointing  out 
that  he  knew  better  what  to  say  than  anyone  else  in 
the  room.  But  this  did  not  turn  out  to  be  the  case. 
Grattan,  when  he  arose,  began  to  stutter  and  mumble 
in  the  most  pitiable  manner,  and  finally  broke  down 
so  completely  that  Sir  John  thought  it  necessary  by 
various  allusions  and  reminders  to  drag  him  up  again, 
in  the  hope  that  his  accidental  shyness  would  have 
dissipated  itself,  and  that  at  the  last  he  would  be  able 
to  make  for  them  such  a  speech  as  was  due  from 
Grattan  on  such  an  occasion.  But  the  difficulty 
could  not  be  overcome  ;  he  failed  again  just  as  he 
had  failed  at  first,  and  the  dinner  ended  as  it  might. 
And  yet  this  was  exactly  the  time  when  he  was 
taking  the  English  House  of  Commons  by  storm, 
when,  as  the  orator  warmed  to  his  work  and  shot  out 
his  short  keen  sentences  one  after  the  other  like 
arrows,  always  hitting  the  target  at  which  he  aimed, 
Pitt,  as  we  are  told,  kept  watching  the  continually 
increasing  success  of  the  speech  with  the  strongest 
interest  and  sympathy.  The  legend  is  that  he  went 
on  slapping  his  thigh,  repeating  at  intervals  '  It'll 
do,  it'll  do ;  it's  very  great,  by  God/  as  in  spite  of 
the  strange  delivery  and  unfamiliar  style  of  the  new 
member  the  power  within  him  asserted  itself  and 
gradually  mastered  his  audience.  The  reason  of  the 
mishap  mentioned  above  I  take  to  have  been,  that 


AS  DID   THE  IRISH  DINNER   TO   HIM  189 

his  manner  of  speaking  was  naturally  bitter,  aggressive, 
and  pitiless,  intended  for  enemies  and  not  for  friends  ; 
hence  on  looking  into  his  mind  for  the  butter  and 
honey  out  of  which  after-dinner  amenities  and  plati- 
tudes are  made  up,  he  found  nothing  of  the  kind 
within  his  reach,  he  became  in  short  for  the  moment 
just  like  an  empty-headed  novice,  the  difference 
between  them  being,  that  whereas  the  novice  would 
have  had  nothing  to  say  at  all,  the  veteran  had 
nothing  that  was  suited  to  his  hearers  or  his  actual 
position. 


CHAPTER  X. 

Oastler,  the  demagogue— His  great  oratorical  powers — Triumphs  over 
Queen's  Counsel  at  York — Critical  examination  of  the  famous  oath 
in  the  Oration  on  the  Crown — London  amusements— Lady  Davy  at 
Stafford  House— My  first  tour — Old  English  racehorses — Proposed 
alteration  in  the  conditions  of  a  Queen's  plate. 

PASSING  out  of  St.  Stephen's,  there  flourished  in 
the  days  of  my  youth  a  queer  sort  of  demagogue 
named  Oastler,  who  under  more  favourable  circum- 
stances might,  I  think,  have  claimed  a  place  in  the 
very  first  rank  of  orators.  He  had  entangled  himself 
in  money  difficulties  and  was  under  a  cloud  of  some 
kind  ;  he  exercised  nevertheless  complete  control  over 
the  Lancashire  mobs,  to  whom  he  always  appealed, 
oddly  enough,  in  the  character  of  a  high  Tory.  I 
recollect  greatly  admiring  a  speech  of  his  against  the 
new  poor  law,  which  began  thus  :  '  How  comes  it  to 
pass,  my  friends,  that  I,  a  high  Tory,  am  the  only 
man  of  my  party  who  can  at  all  times  command 
a  hearing  from  the  people  of  England  ? '  This  speech 
was  full  of  fire  and  energy,  exciting  the  crowd  into 
tremendous  enthusiasm.  At  the  same  time  it  would 
have  puzzled  the  most  fastidious  among  scholars 
to  find  a  fault  in  his  diction  or  in  the  structure  of 
his  sentences.  His  distinction  between  Radicals  and 


OASTLER  AND  THE  DISSENTING  MINISTER     191 

Tories  was  as  follows  :  that  the  first-named  revered  and 
respected  nothing  but  their  own  crotchets  and  dreams, 
whilst  it  was  the  characteristic  of  the  genuine  honest 
Tory,   though  no   doubt   he   reverenced  deeply  the 
prerogatives  of  the  Queen  upon  her  throne,  to  reve- 
rence them  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  rights  of 
the  peasant  in  his  cottage.     This  masterpiece  came  to 
me  through  the  newspapers,  but  I  heard  him  speak 
at  York  from  quite  a  different  position,  and  secure,  if 
possible,  a  yet  greater  triumph. 

He  had  ruthlessly  libelled  a  dissenting  minister, 
who  seemed,  from  what  came  out  on  the  trial,  to  be 
an  underbred  fellow,  of  coarse  habits  and  disagree- 
able manners,  but  I  did  not  gather,  in  the  course  of 
the  discussion,  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  positive 
immorality  or  was  really  a  bad  man.  The  dissenter's 
friends  had  hired  some  of  the  ablest  advocates  on  the 
circuit  to  plead  his  cause,  and  against  them  Oastler,  a 
layman  of  humble  rank  and  imperfect  education,  stood 
up  alone.  By  contrasting  the  vulgar  roughness  of 
his  antagonist  with  the  idea  and  behaviour  of  a 
true  Christian  priest,  by  painting,  which  he  did  with 
admirable  force  and  effect,  what  the  plaintiff  really 
was,  and  what,  as  a  minister  of  God,  he  ought  to 
have  been,  he  made  him  so  odious  to  everybody  that 
the  Queen's  Counsel  wrestled  with  their  unlearned 
opponent  in  vain,  and  could  extract  from  the  jury 
for  their  client  nothing  better  than  a  farthing 
damages.  Oastler's  peroration  I  recollect  perfectly ; 
it  was  grandly  conceived  and  grandly  delivered. 


192  OASTLER'S  TRIUMPH 

1  Gentlemen  of  the  jury/  he  exclaimed,  'the  plaintiff 
asks  you  to  award  him  a  thousand  pounds  as  some 
mitigation  of  the  injuries  I  am  supposed  to  have 
inflicted  upon  him.  If  you  take  his  view  of  the  case 
and  find  me  guilty,  I  can  only  say  that  I  am  poor  and 
helpless.  I  do  not  possess  a  thousand  pounds,  no  nor 
yet  a  thousand  shillings  in  the  world.  Such  a  verdict 
therefore  to  me  is  just  the  same  as  a  sentence  of  life- 
long imprisonment,  but,  gentlemen,  even  then,  even 
if  yonder  towers  '  (pointing  to  York  Castle,  with  the 
grim  old  keep  of  the  Cliffords  overhanging  it,  and 
frowning  in  at  the  windows),  '  are  destined  to  be  my 
home  and  my  grave,  I  can  yet  make  myself  happy 
to  the  end.  I  have  unmasked  a  scoundrel,  and  shall 
still  thank  God  for  the  good  that  I  have  done.' 
After  this  the  poor  dissenter,  treated  perhaps  some- 
what worse  than  he  deserved,  could  do  nothing 
more  than  slink  away  into  the  darkness,  with  or 
without  his  hardly  earned  farthing,  whilst  Oastler 
strode  out  of  court  in  a  blaze  of  glory.  Considering 
the  toughness  of  a  Yorkshire  jury,  and  the  real 
ability  of  the  men  whom  he  encountered  and  over- 
threw on  their  own  ground,  I  do  not  remember  a 
greater  rhetorical  victory. 

As  we  are  talking  of  rhetorical  victories,  this 
part  of  my  book  is  perhaps  as  good  as  any  other  for 
putting  forward  and  claiming  as  my  own,  a  side 
light  which  I  have  attempted  to  throw  on  the  most 
famous  passage  of  all  recorded  speeches.  I  mean  the 
great  appeal  to  the  dead,  in  Demosthenes'  Oration  on 


ORATION  ON  THE  CROWN  193 

the  Crown.  As  I  remarked  with  reference  to  the 
Pythian  St.  Leger  in  the  '  Electra '  of  Sophocles,  you 
suggest  what  something  in  the  '  Electra '  or  elsewhere 
really  means,  then  twenty  or  thirty  years  afterwards, 
you  meet  your  own  opinion  again,  evolved  out  of  the 
inner  consciousness  of  some  well-known  professional 
scholar,  and  it  becomes  his  property  from  that  day 
forth.  Now,  whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  I  am 
somewhat  vain  of  my  interpretation  of  the  immortal 
appeal,  or,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  oath,  in 
question.  This  oath,  I  may  remind  my  readers,  is  an 
adjuration  summoning  up  before  his  audience  the 
memory  of  those  who  faced  the  first  great  Hellenic 
dangers,  at  Marathon,  at  Salamis,  at  Platea,  and  other 
battlefields  for  their  common  country.  He  calls  upon 
these  mighty  shadows  to  give  their  sanction  to 
the  course  adopted  by  him  against  Philip,  and  to 
ratify  his  acts,  without  reference  to  their  good  suc- 
cess or  ill  success,  because,  like  them,  he  was  inspired 
by  a  true  patriotism,  by  an  enlightened  devotion  to 
a  great  and  glorious  cause.  Now  this  passage  has 
always  been  considered  by  the  Greeks,  and  by  those 
who  follow  the  Greeks,  as  a  marvel  of  eloquence. 
We  find  it  selected  by  the  well-known  critic  Longinus, 
as  the  chief  instance  of  the  sublime  in  oratory,  and 
this  praise  has  been  echoed  on  through  a  crowd  of 
commentators  and  lecturers,  from  generation  to  gene- 
ration. I  own  frankly  that  when  I  first  read  De- 
mosthenes, these  praises  appeared  to  me  a  little  over- 
pitched  ;  the  diction  no  doubt  is  perfect,  and  the  roll 


of  the  sentences  falls  upon  the  ear  like  the  sound  of 
u  minster  organ,  but  after  all,  even  in  England, 
where  passions  and  sympathies  are  less  easily  roused 
than  in  more  southern  countries,  it  does  not  require 
a  superhuman  genius  to  make  a  good  deal  out  of 
Trafalgar  or  Waterloo.  As  Captain  Shandon  in 
Thackeray's  l  Pendennis  '  remarks,  with  a  wink  in  his 
left  eye  which  was  not  all  enthusiasm,  *  I  never 
knew  the  Duke  to  fail.'  Now,  Marathon  and  Salamis 
among  the  Athenians  must  have  been  topics  as  safe 
to  win  cheers,  as  Trafalgar  or  Waterloo  among  our- 
selves. Surely,  I  said  to  myself,  there  must  be  some 
subtler  magic,  some  deeper  charm  in  these  immortal 
words,  or  the  admiration  of  Longinus  would  hardly 
have  kindled  itself  up  into  such  unprecedented  zeal. 
What  can  that  charm  and  magic  be  ? 

After  thinking  the  matter  over,  it  occurred  to  me 
that  our  modern  scholastic  pilots  have  missed  their 
proper  channel,  by  confusing  the  modern  system  of 
oaths,  and  the  modern  view  of  swearing,  with  that 
appeal  to  the  gods  and  demigods  always  floating 
about  the  ordinary  talk  of  Greek  men  and  women,  as 
a  matter  of  course.  In  this  very  oration,  Zeus  and 
other  deities,  if  I  mistake  not,  are  invoked,  without 
any  particular  reason,  a  hundred  times  or  more 
before  we  come  to  the  men  of  Marathon.  Therefore 
there  must  have  been  a  special  happiness  in  the 
allusion  to  them,  and  this,  according  to  my  belief,  was 
that  special  happiness.  The  Athenians  were  listen- 
ing intently  to  the  arguments  of  Demosthenes,  but 


MY  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  OATH  195 

listening  without  any  expectation  of  *  some  new 
thing  '  dawning  upon  them.  When  the  words  ov  /xa 
were  uttered,  they  were  uttered  for  them  as  the 
beginning  of  a  familiar  and  well  recognised  formula, 
and  they  had  no  more  doubt  that  Demosthenes  was 
going  to  finish  the  phrase  with  the  words  TOV  Ala.  or 
the  like,  than  I  have  that  the  ensuing  Session  will  be 
opened  by  a  Queen's  Speech  ;  but  whilst  they  waited 
thus,  carelessly  anticipating  the  words  about  to  come, 
for  the  first  time  in  history  they  were  startled  to 
find  a  mode  of  speech  hitherto  consecrated  to  Zeus 
and  the  other  immortals  suddenly  linked  with  the 
names  of  men,  and  that  those  who  had  fought  at 
Marathon  and  at  Salamis,  under  whose  guardianship 
Demosthenes,  because  he  had  inherited  their  noble- 
ness, and  trod  in  their  footsteps,  sublimely  begged 
the  question  in  his  own  favour,  stood  up  at  once, 
lifted  to  the  rank  of  gods  and  heroes,  by  the  mere 
form  of  the  expression.  No  wonder  that  with  their 
feelings  already  at  a  white  heat,  all  hearts  among  the 
men  of  Athens  broke  out  together  into  a  conflagra- 
tion of  sympathy,  and  that  jEschines,  the  rival  and 
enemy,  struck  down  by  this  undreamt  of  thunderbolt 
of  eloquence,  ceased  to  exist  for  the  audience.  In 
order  to  ascertain  whether  anything  like  it  had  hap- 
pened previously,  I  went  straight  through  Aristo- 
phanes. I  thought  that  perhaps  he  might  have 
shown  the  way  to  Bob  Acres  in  Sheridan's  comedy, 
and  set  on  foot  the  odds,  whips,  and  wheels  system 
of  swearing  as  a  valuable  element  in  some  of  his 


196  THE  SWEARING  BY  THE  SCEPTRE 

plays  ;  but  nothing  of  the  sort  is  discoverable.  I 
then  applied  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  perhaps  the  highest 
authority  that  we  can  name  on  questions  of  eloquence 
and  scholarship  combined.  The  only  exception  to 
the  ordinary  rule  suggested  by  him  was  that  Aga- 
memnon in  the  Iliad  once  makes  his  ancestral  sceptre 
a  thing  to  swear  by,  val  p,a  rdSe  cnaJTrrpov.  The  answer 
to  this  is  double  ;  first  that  Homer  belonged  to  a  very 
remote  epoch,  to  a  time  differing  so  completely  in 
manners,  customs,  and  feelings  from  the  time  of 
Demosthenes,  that  he  is  hardly  admissible  as  a  wit- 
ness, and  secondly  (this  is  the  true  answer),  that  the 
exception  is  not  a  real,  but  only  a  seeming  excep- 
tion. The  sceptre  in  question  had  been  brought  down 
by  Hermes  from  heaven  as  the  consecrated  and 
consecrating  gift  of  Zeus  ;  it  was  delivered  over  to  the 
holder's  forefathers,  as  the  symbol  of  God-given  au- 
thority, and  therefore  possessed  from  the  beginning 
a  divinity  of  its  own.  This  estimate  of  mine  as  to 
the  real  reason  why  this  famous  passage  produced  so 
great  and  lasting  an  effect,  I  submit  for  what  it  is 
worth  to  scholars  and  critics,  and  also  to  men  of  the 
world  whose  knowledge  and  critical  power  are  not 
confined  to  books  and  manuscripts,  but  pass  beyond 
them  into  life. 

During  all  this  Eton  and  Oxford  time,  of  course,  I 
partook  of  the  usual  London  amusements  and  relaxa- 
tions ,  but  balls  and  parties  in  London  are  mono- 
tonous enough,  and  though  one  or  more  of  them  may 
have  possessed  for  you  a  special  attraction,  that  will 


LADY  DAVY  AT  STAFFORD  HOUSE      197 

not  interest  the  future  ages.  The  only  thing  that 
returns  upon  me  here  as  worth  mentioning  was  my 
accidentally  catching  a  glimpse  of  what  may  be  called 
1  high  life  below  stairs,'  one  night  at  Stafford  House. 
There  was  a  huge  assembly  there,  and  the  hall- 
porter,  a  grand  looking  giant,  absolutely  dazzled  one's 
eyes  in  his  state  livery  of  green  and  gold.  His  duty 
was  to  call  people's  carriages,  and  he  performed  his 
duty  well.  Old  Lady  Davy,  widow  of  the  celebrated 
philosopher  and  fisherman,  Sir  Humphry,  pressed 
her  claims  upon  him  with  some  intensity.  It  is  im- 
possible to  conceive  anything  more  elaborately 
courteous  and  deferential  than  his  way  of  addressing 
her.  '  Yes,  my  lady,  I  have  already  called  for  your 
servants  three  or  four  times,  and  they  do  not  answer, 
but  if  your  ladyship  pleases,  I  shall  be  glad  to  try 
once  more.'  She  accepted  this  oifer  eagerly,  and 
out  he  went,  I  following  on  my  own  business.  The 
moment  he  was  beyond  a  green  baize  curtain  mo- 
mentarily occupying  the  place  of  the  door,  his  whole 
manner  and  demeanour  changed  at  once;  he  swaggered 
amongst  the  dingy  linkboys  like  a  blase*  rainbow,  and 
called  out  in  the  roughest  possible  voice,  and  in  a 
style  anything  but  respectful,  '  I  say  you  fellows,  give 
that  old  Davy  girl  another  call.'  He  kept  his  pro- 
mise with  strict  fidelity,  but  if  she  had  heard  how 
he  did  it,  I  think,  after  his  extreme  politeness  inside 
the  house,  it  would  have  startled  her  as  much  as  it 
amused  me. 

In  the   summer  of  1829  I  went  abroad  for  the 


198  DREADFUL  ACCIDENT  AT  SPA 

first  time.  It  was  not  much  of  a  tour,  and  I  should 
hardly  have  mentioned  it  but  for  a  terrible  misfor- 
tune that  took  place  at  Spa  in  the  house  where  we 
had  established  ourselves.  A  Monsieur  Du  Briasse 
and  his  wife,  an  exceedingly  pretty  woman,  occupied 
the  ground  floor. 

It  was  the  custom  of  the  Spa  visitors  to  ride  out 
all  together  on  capital  little  forest  ponies  belonging 
to  the  place.  One  morning,  it  turned  to  rain,  and 
we  came  back  wet  and  discomfited.  I  was  reading 
in  my  bedroom.  Suddenly  a  strange  cry  fell  upon 
my  ears.  I  could  not  decide  whether  it  were  a  scream 
of  agony,  or  merely  hysterical  laughter,  and  hurried 
down  to  ascertain.  When  I  reached  the  bottom  of 
the  stairs,  before  me  stood  Madame  Du  Briasse  half 
naked,  for  her  clothes  had  been  burnt  off  her  back. 
Her  petticoat,  slipping  an  inch  or  two  below  her  riding 
dress,  was  seen  on  her  return  home  to  be  slightly 
wet.  She  tried  to  dry  it  over  a  wood  fire,  when  a 
spark  flew  out  of  the  grate,  and  she  found  herself  in 
flames.  Her  husband  lost  his  head,  and  rushed  out 
into  the  open  hall  calling  for  help,  instead  of  attend- 
ing to  her  himself,  and  she  followed  him.  The  wind 
caught  her,  and  did  its  evil  work  in  an  instant.  Help 
had  come  from  others  ere  I  arrived,  but  it  had  come 
too  late,  and  she  died  a  week  afterwards. 

Even  in  that  terrible  moment,  I  could  not  help 
being  struck  by  an  illustration  of  St.  Evremond's 
remark,  that  a  woman  always  cares  less  for  her  life 
than  her  beauty. 


EACE-HORSES  OLD  AND  NEW  199 

'  Je  suis  abime'e  pour  toujours,'  repeated  over  and 
over  again,  was  the  expression  that  rose  naturally  to 
the  poor  sufferer's  lips,  and  I  learnt  then  that  the 
French  cynic's  experience  on  this  point  is  not  to  be 
entirely  disregarded.  This  sad  event  threw  a  gloom 
over  the  whole  journey,  and  we  were  glad  to  find 
ourselves  at  home  again. 

The  recreation,  however,  as  I  have  told  my 
readers  before,  that  I  liked  best,  was  attending  races, 
and  I  generally  managed  to  be  at  York  or  Doncaster 
during  the  summer  vacation.  From  the  racing  at 

o  o 

York  in  1824  I  derived  an  impression,  never  to  be 
effaced,  that  our  present  horses  have  been  for  many 
years  gradually  decreasing  in  point  of  stamina  and 
endurance.  These  fancies  of  mine,  I  know,  lead  the 
worshippers  of  Admiral  Rous  to  look  upon  me  as  a 
fossilised  old  fool ;  I  return  the  compliment  by  looking 
upon  them  as  a  set  of  racing  tradesmen,  who  only 
care  for  our  national  sports  as  a  trade.  To  them  the 
superiority  of  our  English  thoroughbreds  as  one  of  the 
elements  of  England's  greatness  is  perfectly  indif- 
ferent ;  to  most  of  them  the  best  horse  is  the  horse 
that  wins  them  the  most  money — they  have  no  other 
criterion  of  merit.  In  August  1824,  I  saw  Lord 
Durham's  Carnival  run  two  desperate  four-mile  races 
on  two  successive  days.  In  his  second  race  he 
met  new  antagonists,  including  an  ex-winner  of  the 
St.  Leger.  He  then  walked  over  after  a  dead  heat  with 
Mr.  Watts's  Duport,  none  the  worse  for  his  previous 
exertions.  Even  then,  though  it  did  him  no  harm,  this 
w 


200  REFORMATION  OF  QUEEN'S  PLATES 

double  trial  was  considered  to  press  upon  Carnival 
somewhat  unfairly.  In  1800  such  an  effort  would 
have  been  so  wholly  in  accordance  with  the  ordinary 
routine,  that  the  busiest  of  humanitarians  would  not 
have  troubled  himself  to  wag  a  tongue  on  the  horse's 
behalf,  whilst  in  1884,  if  the  Kousites  will  find  me 
an  animal  who  after  galloping  four  miles  in  seven 
minutes  and  forty  seconds,  and  running  his  antagonist 
to  half  a  head,  will  be  ready  to  face  fresh  opponents 
on  the  next  day  after  over  the  same  distance  at  the 
same  rate  of  speed,  I  will  imitate  Charles  Greville's 
example,  and  offer  up  a  silver  horseshoe  at  the 
shrine  of  the  handicapping  Admiral's  patron  saint,  if 
he  have  a  patron  saint. 

I  have  often,  when  young,  witnessed  contests 
of  the  same  kind  both  at  York  and  Doncaster ; 
at  York  also,  in  1824,  I  saw  two  miles  accom- 
plished in  three  minutes  and  twenty- eight  seconds. 
All  that  I  have  seen  tends,  therefore,  to  confirm  me 
in  my  heresy,  if  heresy  it  be,  that  our  present  racers, 
though  they  may  be  as  speedy  as  ever,  are  no 
longer,  in  many  important  respects,  what  once  their 
forefathers  were.  This  being  my  decided  opinion, 
I  do  not  think  it  out  of  place  to  repeat  a  suggestion 
here,  submitted  to  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Lord  Granville 
several  years  ago.  Three  thousand  pounds  and  up- 
wards are  annually  spent  upon  a  certain  number  of 
Queen's  plates.  These  Queen's  plates,  at  the  time  of  my 
writing,  were  only  one  hundred  guineas  apiece ;  they 
have  since  been  raised  to  two  and  in  some  cases  to  three 


QUEEN'S  PLATERS  TO  BE  MADE   TO  GALLOP      201 

hundred  guineas  apiece.  This  is  a  step  in  the  right 
direction,  but  not  a  sufficient  step.  The  object  of  these 
grants  being  to  maintain  our  national  breed  of  horses 
unimpaired,  and  to  keep  our  national  pre-eminence 
over  all  other  European  countries  beyond  dispute, 
unless  we  get  an  adequate  return  for  this  expenditure 
of  public  money,  the  manner  of  expending  it  ought 
to  be  reconsidered.  At  present  I  affirm  the  money 
to  be  simply  thrown  away.  Now,  although  I  do  not 
suppose  the  scheme  I  offered  to  Mr.  Gladstone  would 
work  miracles,  I  still  think  it  worth  trying.  This  was 
the  scheme.  That  the  Government  should  reduce  the 
numerous  Queen's  plates,  which  have  become  per- 
fectly useless,  from  their  present  number  to  three  of 
one  thousand  or  twelve  hundred  pounds  apiece.  If 
Ministers  were  disposed  to  be  generous,  they  might 
add  two  more,  one  for  Ireland  and  another  for  Scot- 
land, annually.  If,  however,  they  do  not  choose  to 
give  anything  but  what  they  give  already,  they  ought 
to  keep  two  of  these  plates  for  England,  and  assign 
the  third  to  Scotland  and  Ireland  on  alternate  years. 
I  would  add  that  as  this  is  a  tax  imposed  on  English- 
men for  the  sake  of  the  English  horses,  Frenchmen, 
Germans,  and  Americans,  who  can  take  excellent  care 
of  themselves,  should  be  completely  shut  out  from 
such  competitions.  I  need  not  enter  into  special 
details  ;  the  one  point  I  should  insist  upon  above  all 
others,  is  a  regulation  of  the  pace  at  which  the  races 
must  be  run.  If,  as  Admiral  Rous  asserts,  neither 
Highflyer  nor  Eclipse  could  now  win  a  selling  race, 


202  PRESENT  AMERICAN  RACE-HORSES 

our  present  matchless  coursers  cannot  complain  if 
they  are  required  to  gallop  as  the  contemporaries 
of  Highflyer  and  Eclipse  used  to  gallop  in  their  day. 
Three  minutes  and  a  half  for  two  miles,  5.15  for  three, 
7J  for  four,  7.55  for  the  Beacon  course  (I  am  speak- 
ing roughly  no  doubt),  would  be  my  limits,  and  any 
winner  who  did  not  accomplish  his  prescribed  task 
would  have  to  forfeit  half  the  money  given.  This  sum 
I  should  add  to  the  next  year's  plate,  and  hope  that, 
in  process  of  time,  large  sums  would  thus  accumulate, 
and  tempt  breeders  to  aim  at  producing  stronger, 
sounder,  and  more  enduring  animals ;  to  reproduce,  in 
fact,  horses  such  as  Lord  Stradbroke  recollects,  when 
the  Beacon  course  was  sure  to  be  run  over  in  less 
than  eight  minutes  if  the  weather  were  not  exception- 
ally bad.  Such  horses,  I  may  point  out,  as  Iroquois 
and  Foxhall,  were  bred  and  reared  more  according 
to  the  old  system  than  the  new,  and  are  more  akin 
to  Hambletoniun,  Waxy,  and  Sir  Peter  (I  am  not 
speaking  of  Highflyer  or  Eclipse),  than  our  actual 
Derby  winners. 


CHAPTER  XL 

All  Souls — A  word  in  defence  of  All  Souls  fellowships — Henry  Ker 
Seymer — Abolition  of  local  scholarships — Henry  Denison  and  Mr. 
Dry — The  way  in  which  the  prizes  are  now  decided — My  protest 
against  it. 

AFTER  my  degree,  in  due  process  of  time  I  was 
elected  to  an  All  Souls  fellowship,  and  here  formed 
many  friendships.  These  All  Souls  fellowships  were 
not  very  defensible  in  theory,  but  if  you  judge  them 
by  their  actual  effects,  there  was  something  to  be  said 
for  them.  They  formed,  in  common  with,  perhaps 
even  rather  more  than  other  lay  fellowships,  a  link 
between  the  world  and  the  university.  They  did  this 
by  enabling  men  possessed  of  many  valuable  qualities, 
who  otherwise  would  have  passed  away  from  Oxford 
altogether,  to  maintain  their  connection  with  it — a 
connection,  I  think,  of  use  both  to  the  College  Dons, 
who  were  inspirited  by  the  oxygen  of  a  larger  life 
from  without,  and  also  to  the  men  I  speak  of,  who 
preserved  the  associations  of  their  youth,  and  renewed 
their  early  friendships  to  freshen  them  up  amid  the 
dust  and  bustle  of  the  world. 

Of  such  men  you  could  not  find  a  better  specimen 
than  Henry  Ker  Seymer,  afterwards  member  for 
Dorsetshire.  Though  clever  and  highly  cultivated,  he 


204  ALL  SOULS  FELLOWSHIPS— HENRY  KER  SEYMER 

had  not  sought  distinction  in  the  Schools  from  Greek 
and  Latin,  and  therefore  would  not  have  been  able  to 
offer  himself  as  a  candidate  under  the  new  system. 
But  though  not  more  than  fairly  good  as  a  classical 
scholar,  he  was  thoroughly  well  versed  in  French 
and  Italian,  as  well  as  in  other  kinds  of  knowledge. 
He  had  also  travelled  much,  and  knew  life  as  well  as, 
if  not  better  than  books.  His  temper  was  excellent, 
his  judgment  sound,  enriched  by  a  fine  sense  of 
humour  and  a  keen  insight  into  character.  Such  a 
man,  coming  down  from  London  and  the  House  of 
Commons  once  a  week  or  so,  during  the  term,  gave, 
as  I  have  said,  something  to  the  Oxford  residents, 
and  received  from  them  something  in  return,  to  the 
advantage  of  both.  In  the  House  of  Commons  he 
was  highly  valued  as  an  able  speaker,  but  still  more 
as  one  exercising  a  good  influence  over  public  opinion, 
and  as  an  excellent  representative  of  the  best  and 
highest  class  among  our  English  country  gentlemen. 

An  alteration  in  the  Oxford  system  took  place,  I 
cannot  exactly  say  when,  which  I  suppose  will  be 
said  by  its  advocates  to  have  done  good  upon  the 
whole,  but  at  the  same  time  it  produced  a  certain 
amount  of  mischief,  mischief  that  cannot  be  repaired, 
and  which  was  not,  I  think,  sufficiently  considered. 
The  alteration  I  mean  was  the  sweeping  away  of 
local  scholarships  and  exhibitions  in  favour  of  un- 
restricted competition. 

A  decayed  Grammar  School,  at  Pottlebury  let  us 
call  it,  may  not  send  up  shining  lights  to  Balliol  or 


LOCAL  EXHIBITIONS  205 

Exeter,  whilst  a  certain  number  of  half-educated 
young  men,  and,  possibly  not  of  the  highest  breeding, 
will  be  sure  to  have  bothered  and  irritated  their 
tutors  more  or  less.  Out  of  a  hundred  scholars, 
therefore,  ninety  and  nine  of  those  who  now  fill  up 
the  vacancies  on  Mr.  Robinson's  foundation  (meant 
by  him  to  benefit  his  native  place)  may  be  superior 
to  their  rustic  predecessors.  But  even  in  that  case, 
as  the  ninety-nine  candidates  aforesaid  would  pro- 
bably have  found  their  place  in  a  College  through 
their  own  resources,  the  university  gains  little  or 
nothing,  whilst  in  spite  of  this  being  a  democratic 
age,  you  are  robbing  the  poor  to  bestow  undue 
advantage  upon  the  rich.  The  wealthier  a  man  is, 
the  better  he  can  educate  his  children  ;  naturally  he 
grudges  no  expense,  and  therefore  these  scholarships 
and  exhibitions  now  fall  to  those  for  whom  they 
never  were  intended,  whilst  the  poor  young  men 
of  promising  talents,  for  whom  they  were  intended, 
are  left  out  in  the  cold.  In  ordinary  cases,  though 
injustice  is  done  to  the  founder,  and  also  to  the 
natural  objects  of  his  bounty,  the  evil  may  not  be 
very  serious  or  very  extensive,  but  it  is  easy  to  con- 
ceive that  every  now  and  then  something  much 
worse  than  this  may  happen  to  the  country,  nay 
to  the  world  at  large.  You  may  bar  the  door  of 
advancement  against  a  Newton,  arrest  his  mental 
development  at  the  most  critical  period  of  his  life, 
and  probably  end  by  driving  him  into  a  grocer's  shop. 
The  smug  young  gentleman  from  Eton  or  Shrews- 


206  OBJECTIONS  TO  THEIR  ABOLITION 

bury,  who  under  the  actual  system  fills  his  place, 
passes,  I  dare  say,  creditably  enough  through  a 
commonplace  life,  but  the  man  of  high  though  un- 
developed genius,  whom  he  shuts  out  from  those 
possibilities  heretofore  opened  to  him  by  some  pro- 
vincial patriot,  may  have  to  tie  up  half-pounds  of  tea, 
day  after  day,  for  his  village  customers,  instead  of 
discovering  the  theory  of  gravitation  and  weighing  the 
stars  in  a  balance.  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  how 
many  first  classes  would  adequately  compensate  for 
the  quenching,  or  even  for  the  eclipsing,  of  such  a 
light. 

It  was  whilst  I  was  a  fellow  at  All  Souls  that 
Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon  took  the  place  of  the 
Hederics  and  Scapulas  plodded  over  by  us.  Our 
successors  at  Oxford  ought  in  consequence  to  be,  as 
I  believe  they  are,  better  Greek  scholars  than  we  ever 
were,  though,  of  course,  if  Greek  be  made  easier,  men 
will  spend  less  thought  and  work  in  acquiring  it  ; 
hence  it  becomes  more  of  an  accomplishment,  and 
loses  some  of  its  value  as  a  great  element  of  education 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  We  might  even  start 
higher  up  ;  our  great-grandfathers  failed  to  understand 
many  passages  smoothed  into  clearness  and  simplicity 
for  us,  and  still  more  so  for  our  successors,  but  in 
trying  to  understand  them,  they  did  more  for  the 
enlargement  of  their  minds  than  do  the  men  of  this 
generation,  leaning  upon  their  cribs,  and  surrounded 
by  annotations  to  explain  everything.  Nevertheless, 
education  or  no  education,  1  wish  that  a  Gra3co- 


MR.  DRY,  THE  CHRIST  CHURCH  BUTLER        207 

English,  and  still  more  an  Anglo -Greek  Lexicon,  had 
existed  in  my  time.  It  would  have  saved  me  a  great 
deal  of  trouble.  To  this  day,  I  cannot  help  laughing 
whenever  I  recall  Sydney  Smith's  inimitable  picture 
of  the  unhappy  boy  blundering  about  among  the 
various  English  renderings  of  the  six  Latin  words, 
all  grouped  together  around  that  one  Greek  word  the 
meaning  of  which  he  had  to  fathom,  '  when  all  the 
time  he  knows,  that  by  just  running  round  the 
corner,  he  can  obtain  any  quantity  of  ripe  gooseberries 
on  credit? 

I  have  said  above  that  Henry  Denison  had  been 
a  student  of  Christ  Church  before  he  became  a  fellow 
of  All  Souls.  His  flitting  from  the  one  College  to 
the  other  was  accompanied,  or  rather  followed,  by  an 
amusing  incident.  Our  old  College  butler,  Mr.  Dry, 
was  a  gentleman  believed  to  be  quite  able  to  take 
care  of  himself.  Though  answerable  to  the  newly 
elected  fellow  of  All  Souls  for  the  remnant  owing 
to  him  out  of  the  surrendered  studentship,  this 
remnant  he  seemed  in  no  hurry  to  hand  over. 
During  the  interval,  Henry  Denison  grew  furious, 
and  went  about  denouncing  the  law's  delay,  and 
heaped  upon  poor  Dry  unsparing  invectives  on 
account  of  his  wicked  procrastination.  '  That  old 
beggar  Dry,  I  cannot  get  hold  of  him.  I  believe  he 
means  to  cheat  me  out  of  my  money.  I  won't  stand 
it  much  longer,  I  can  tell  you.'  At  last  the  earnestly 
desired  moment  came,  and  Denison  claimed  what  was 
due  to  him  somewhat  fiercely,  but  Mr.  Dry,  on  his 


208  MY  BOUT  WITH  HIM 

part,  being  a  man  of  the  most  elaborate  and  unctuous 
politeness,  bowed  gravely  in  return,  and  replied  thus : 
'  Oh,  certainly,  Mr.  Denison,  nothing  will  give  me 
greater  pleasure,  but  perhaps  you  will  oblige  me  by 
settling  this  little  account  before  I  do  so.'  Then 
straightway  there  issued  out  of  his  terrible  pocket, 
like  the  ghost  of  Peter  Schemyl's  Uncle,  a  ghastly 
apparition  of  l  battells,  dues,  and  decrements,'  which, 
not  content  with  swallowing  up  the  debt  supposed  to 
be  owing  from  the  College,  asked  for  more  as  shame- 
lessly as  Oliver  Twist.  When  it  came  to  my  turn,  I 
endeavoured  to  avenge  Henry  Denison  by  using  with 
my  best  skill  the  arms  of  courtesy  against  this  bland 
old  humbug.  He  congratulated  me  '  on  being  elected 
to  a  society  of  such  distinction,  after  having  passed 
through  the  ordeal  of  the  university  with  such  brilliant 
success.'  '  Mr.  Dry,'  I  answered  solemnly,  '  thank 
you  very  much  for  your  kind  congratulations,  but  I 
think  you  underrate  my  merits.  I  have  been  elected 
to  All  Souls,  not  after,  but  before,  passing  through 
the  ordeal  of  the  university,  inasmuch  as  this  bill 
of  yours,  a  somewhat  serious  item  of  such  an  ordeal, 
remains  unpaid  ;  however,  as  the  French  say,  "  Bira 
bien,  qui  rit  le  dernier."  Mr.  Dry,  pocketing  the 
money  I  owed  to  him,  smiled  with  calm  superiority, 
and  we  parted  friends. 

My  first  fellowship  lasted  seven  years,  until  my 
marriage — and  socially  speaking,  has  always  remained 
full  of  pleasant  recollections.  From  a  money  point 
of  view,  on  the  other  hand,  the  profits  were  small. 


UNPLEASANT  ECONOMISTS  209 

A  man  residing  there  constantly,  at  least  if  he  were 
a  junior  fellow,  would  hardly  have  got  more  than 
his  board  and  lodging.  When  I  was  again  elected 
as  Poetry  Professor,  the  fellowship  had  much  im- 
proved in  value,  and  turned  the  professorship  into  a 
well-remunerated  office,  which  in  itself  it  was  not, 
particularly  as  it  seemed  good  to  the  university, 
shortly  after  my  election,  to  convert  the  leaseholds 
whereon  it  rested  into  freehold  property,  a  re-invest- 
ment benefiting  the  university  I  daresay,  but  at  my 
expense.  I  believe  the  authorities  have  since  found 
out  a  way  to  raise  the  salary  again,  and  that  it  re- 
turns to  what  it  was  in  Mr.  Arnold's  time,  which  is 
all  the  better  for  Professor  Palgrave. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  the  gentlemen  responsible 
to  Oxford  had  excellent  reasons  for  what  they  did, 
both  first  and  last,  and  I  do  not  pretend  to  have 
been  ill-used,  still  I  may  perhaps  point  out  that  I 
was  somewhat  unlucky  to  come  in  medias  res,  as  it 
were,  under  the  grip  of  intervening  economists. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Marshal  to  Baron  Parke  in  1834-5 — Eccentricities  of  his  namesake 
and  brother  judge,  James  Allan  Park — The  habit  of  talking  to  one- 
self— Story  of  the  Chinese  pedlar — Baron  Parke's  generosity  to  his 
brothers  and  sisters — Lady  Parke,  afterwards  Lady  Wensleydale 
— Epigrams  of  Baron  Parke — Sam  Rogers — Courvoisier's  Trial — 
Duty  of  an  advocate — Family  life  at  Ampthill — Figure  as  a  theo- 
logical instructor. 

To  return  to  the  days  of  my  first  fellowship.  I 
was  then  reading  law  with  William  Plunket,  an  ex- 
cellent fellow,  and  an  Equity  lawyer  of  promise.  He, 
alas,  like  so  many  of  my  earlier  friends,  died  in  youth. 

In  1834  and  1835,  I  was  taken  as  marshal  and 
introduced  to  the  Northern  Circuit — which  I  after- 
wards joined — by  Baron  Parke,  an  old  family  friend, 
and  the  most  learned  if  not  the  greatest  lawyer  of  his 
day. 

There  were  at  that  period  two  James  Parks  or 
Parkes — who  must  not  be  confounded  together,  as  no 
two  men  could  well  be  more  different.  The  elder  of 
the  two,  James  Allan  Park,  was  a  very  worthy  old 
gentleman,  and  as  a  judge  I  believe  quite  par  negotiis 
in  general ;  but  he  had  a  certain  eccentricity  of 
temper  and  thought,  which  every  now  and  then 
turned  him  a  little  out  of  the  right  course.  Before 
proceeding  to  the  real  Simon  Pure,  my  Baron 


JUDGE  PARK'S  SELF-COMMUNINGS  211 

Parke,  I  may  as  well  tell  one  or  two  stories  illus- 
trating his  namesake's  recorded  queernesses  on  the 
Bench — stories  which,  I  daresay,  are  now  lost  to  the 
present  generation  of  barristers.  He  was  a  very 
religious  man,  and  a  great  believer  in  special  inter- 
ventions of  providence  on  adequate,  or,  indeed,  on 
inadequate  grounds.  He  also  very  commonly  talked 
aloud  to  himself  without  being  aware  of  what  he 
was  doing.  In  one  case  that  came  before  him,  the 
prisoner  was  accused  of  stealing  some  faggots,  and 
Park,  on  the  Bench,  was  heard  to  mutter  something 
to  this  effect,  that  he  did  not  quite  see  his  way  to  a 
verdict,  one  faggot  being  as  like  another  faggot  as 
one  egg  is  like  another  egg.  The  quick-eared  bar- 
rister retained  for  the  defence  caught  these  murmur- 
ings  from  above,  and  instantly  made  use  of  them. 
'  Now,  witness,'  he  cried  out,  '  you  swear  to  those 
faggots  ;  how  dare  you  do  such  a  thing  ?  Is  not  one 
faggot  as  like  another  faggot  as  one  egg  is  like 
another  egg  ? '  Immediately  the  judge,  who  though 
a  good  man,  had  certainly  no  claim  to  be  an  angel, 
rushed  in  without  any  proper  apprehensions.  '  Stop 
the  case,'  he  shouted, '  stop  it  at  once  ;  the  coincidence 
is  quite  miraculous.  I  vow  to  God  that  the  very  same 
thought,  in  the  very  same  words,  passed  through 
my  mind  only  a  few  seconds  ago.  Heaven  has  in- 
terfered to  shield  an  innocent  man.  Gentlemen  of 
the  jury,  you  will  acquit  the  prisoner.'  '  But,  my 
lord,'  interposed  the  prosecuting  counsel,  '  your 
lordship  is  under  a  misconception.'  ;  Sit  down,  Mr. 


212  LORD  DUDLEY 

Richards,  sit  down  at  once ;  there  can  have  been  no 
misconception,  this  trial  must  not  go  on.  I  say  again, 
gentlemen  of  the  jury,  you  will  acquit  the  prisoner 
without  delay.'  The  enemies  of  providence  were 
finally  silenced,  and  the  faggot  stealer  went  home,  or 
perhaps  to  the  public-house,  rejoicing  that  he  had 
been  tried  by  such  a  judge. 

This  habit  of  unconsciously  talking  aloud  to  one- 
self is  not  an  uncommon  habit,  and  often  produces 
wonderful  results.  The  Lord  Dudley  of  my  youth, 
the  memory  of  whose  great  talents  and  acquirements 
has  somewhat  faded  from  the  public  mind,  was 
notorious  for  going  astray  in  this  manner.  Indeed  I 
believe,  just  before  his  last  illness,  he  travelled  down 
to  Dover  in  his  carriage  alone,  but  he  carried  on  an 
imaginary  conversation  throughout  the  whole  journey, 
and  complained  bitterly  on  arriving  at  his  inn,  that 
he  had  been  careless  enough  to  let  a  most  agreeable 
companion,  who  had  accompanied  him  from  London, 
escape  before  he  could  ask  him  to  dinner.  Some 
years  before  this,  he  was  the  guest  of  a  connection  of 
mine,  the  late  Mrs.  Cunliffe  Offley.  Mrs.  Cunliffe 
was  aunt  by  marriage  to  the  beautiful  daughters  of 
Sir  Richard  Brooke.  On  coming  into  the  room, 
Lord  Dudley  asked  at  once  after  the  lovely  Miss 
Brooke  (the  present  Lady  Meath),  who  during  the 
previous  season  had  taken  all  hearts  by  storm. 
Mrs.  Cunliffe  answered :  '  I  suppose  you  mean 
Harriett.  She  is  now  at  home,  but  Mary,  her  sister,  is 
with  me  this  year  in  her  place,  and  among  ourselves, 


LORD  DUDLEY  AND  MRS.  CUNLIFFE  213 

we  think  Mary,  though  her  beauty  is  of  a  different 
kind,  quite  as  handsome  as  Harriett.'  'I  daresay,' 
retorted  Lord  Dudley  in  a  regular  fume ;  '  that  is 
always  the  way  with  you  women ;  if  there  is  one 
pretty  girl  among  a  lot  of  sisters,  you  will  try  to 
poke  the  rest  of  them  down  our  throats  over  her 
back.'  Mrs.  Cunliffe,  being  an  old  friend,  and  well 
aware  of  the  Dudley  eccentricities,  was  not  much 
moved  by  this  somewhat  rough  contradiction,  observ- 
ing only,  '  Well,  it  is  nothing  to  me,  Lord  Dudley, 
but  that  is  our  opinion  ;  agree  with  it  or  not,  as  you 
please,  and  now  we  had  better  go  to  dinner.'  To 
dinner  they  went,  and  Lord  Dudley,  sitting  opposite 
the  new  beauty,  very  soon  began  to  talk  to  himself, 
and  to  employ  expressions  which,  as  Punch  would  say, 
he  might  j  ust  as  well  have  kept  unuttered.  '  Confound 
the  old  jade,  I  almost  think  that  she  is  right  after  all ; 
damn  the  old  hag,  she  is  indeed.'  'What  are  you 
talking  about,  Lord  Dudley  ?  '  was  the  not  unnatural 
inquiry.  '  Well,  Mrs.  Cunliffe,  you  see  it  had  just 
passed  through  my  mind  that  your  opinion  as  to  Miss 
Brooke's  beauty  is  quite  justified,  and  I  suppose  I 
have  been  saying  to  myself  how  thoroughly  I  agree 
with  you.'  After  that,  of  course  there  was  nothing 
to  be  done  except  to  stop  that  sort  of  conversation 
as  soon  as  possible. 

The  other  story  belonging  to  James  Allan  Park, 
and  still  floating  about  the  York  and  Lancaster  law 
courts  when  I  first  went  round  the  circuit  as  marshal, 
is  certainly  a  strange  one,  but  barrister  after  barrister 


214  A   CHINESE  PEDLAR 

so  solemnly  assured  me  that  it  was  really  true,  and 
that  it  had  been  repeated  to  me  without  any  measur- 
able exaggeration,  as  to  leave  me  no  choice  except 
to  believe  it.  Here  it  is.  Some  Yorkshire  footpad 
(perhaps  partly  for  the  fun  of  the  thing)  robbed  a 
Chinese  pedlar  near  Leeds.  An  orthodox  church- 
man, by  his  own  account,  he  was  quite  ready  to  kiss 
the  book  and  go  through  all  preliminary  forms  as  a 
Christian,  but  a  terrible  doubt  fell  upon  the  mind  of 
Park,  the  presiding  judge.  He  insisted  on  having 
the  Celestial  pedlar's  religious  views  thoroughly 
ascertained.  '  Ask  him,'  he  said,  sternly  putting 
aside  the  prosecuting  counsel's  general  assurances, 
*  where  he  was  baptized  ? '  The  obedient  interpreter 
started  at  once ;  Hubble  Bubble  &c.,  out  came  the 
answer  in  the  same  dialect.  *  My  Lord,'  explained  the 
interpreter,  l  he  says  he  is  baptized  in  every  town 
he  comes  to.'  This  fact,  as  far  as  it  went,  was  un- 
doubtedly creditable  to  the  Chinaman,  but  it  did  not 
absolutely  chime  in  with  the  thirty-nine  articles,  or 
satisfy  the  exacting  piety  of  the  judge.  '  Oh  dear,  oh 
dear,'  he  said,  *  ask  him  where  he  expects  to  go  after 
death.'  The  Hubble  Bubble  process  resorted  to  again 
brought  out  this  reply  in  English,  '  that  he  expected 
to  go  back  to  Pekin.'  The  judge,  completely  upset, 
applied  to  David  Dundas,  of  whom  I  shall  have  much 
to  say  hereafter,  in  these  words  :  '  My  dear  young 
friend,  you  have  heard  what  has  happened  ;  pray  go 
over  to  the  other  court,  and  ask  my  brother  Holroyd 
what  I  had  better  do.' 


MR.  JUSTICE  HOLROYD  215 

Away  went  Dundas  as  directed.  Now  this  brother 
Holroyd  happened  to  be  a  very  tough  hard  York- 
shireman,  who  had  forced  his  way  to  the  front  of  his 
profession  by  sheer  strength  rather  than  by  any 
special  cultivation  or  grace  of  manner.  Dundas 
found  him  stripped  to  the  waist,  sponging  and  soap- 
ing himself  all  over  (the  weather  being  then  very 
hot),  before  he  started  on  his  walk  before  dinner. 
*  What,'  he  shouted  out  from  the  middle  of  his  basin, 
'  has  Park  caught  a  Tartar?  What  an  ass  he  must 
be  to  hesitate  about  the  matter !  Go  back  and  tell  him 
from  me,  that  the  man's  evidence  is  clearly  inadmis- 
sible.' '  But,  my  lord,'  meekly  suggested  Dundas, 
1  the  fellow  says  he  is  a  Christian.'  '  He  a  Christian ! ' 
roared  out  Holroyd,  resuming  his  ablutions  with 
redoubled  vigour.  *  He  be  damned ;  he  is  no  more 
a  Christian  than  I  am.'  This  was  the  answer  that 
David  Dundas  had  to  carry  back.  Not  that  I  suppose 
Holroyd  meant  more  than  to  reinforce  his  statement 
as  emphatically  as  possible,  only  the  soap  and  water, 
in  which  he  kept  plunging  about  like  a  walrus,  pre- 
vented him  from  picking  and  choosing  his  words  with 
perfect  discretion.  At  any  rate,  not  being  under 
examination,  the  precise  attitude  he  took  up  towards 
the  head  of  the  Church,  however  it  might  operate 
against  him  in  the  future,  was  of  no  present 
importance. 

My  friend  Baron  Parke,  as  I  have  said,  had  but 
little  in  common  with  his  quasi  namesake.  He  was 

one  of  the  most  vigorous  and  masterful  judges  on  the 
15 


216      BARON  PARKE'S  KINDNESS  TO  HIS  FAMILY 

bench,  a  thoroughly  accomplished  lawyer,  and  re- 
markable for  strength  both  of  body  and  mind.  His 
defect  was  a  passion  for  legal  niceties,  which  ap- 
parently led  him  away  every  now  and  then,  so  that 
when  he  got  an  opportunity  he  decided  with  a  certain 
relish  against  parties  who  trusted  to  the  right,  instead 
of  relying,  as  they  ought  to  have  done,  on  the  fine 
legal  quality  of  their  replications  and  demurrers.  In 
spite  of  this  weakness,  however,  to  say  nothing  of  his 
talents,  there  were  few  men  of  more  generous  or  nobler 
nature.  He  was  the  youngest  of  thirteen  children, 
and  his  father,  once  a  successful  merchant,  had  fallen 
into  difficulties.  The  family  circumstances,  therefore, 
were  not  prosperous,  but  he  had  an  uncle  who  died 
possessed  of  considerable  wealth.  This  uncle,  probably 
because  he  had  discovered  that  his  nephew  James 
was  the  flower  of  the  flock,  left  everything  to  him, 
but  James,  saved  from  actual  want  by  his  Trinity 
fellowship,  and  feeling  strong  enough  to  stand  upon 
his  own  legs,  had  no  idea  of  becoming  rich  at  the 
expense  of  his  nearest  and  dearest  relations.  He  ac- 
cordingly divided  this  inheritance  into  thirteen  shares, 
and  distributed  them,  one  by  one,  amongst  his 
brothers  and  sisters,  reserving  only  the  last  share  for 
himself.  He  was  not,  in  the  end,  I  believe  a  very 
great  loser  by  this  open-handed  proceeding  ;  most  of 
his  brothers  died  before  him  without  marrying,  and 
restored  to  him  what  he  had  originally  bestowed  upon 
them.  This,  however,  he  could  not  calculate  upon 
beforehand,  and  there  are  many  men  claiming  to  act 


LADY  PARKE  217 

always  from  the  highest  motives,  who  would  have 
felt  it  a  gross  violation  of  duty,  to  set  at  naught  the 
last  wishes  of  so  excellent  a  man  as  the  testator.  He 
continued  from  first  to  last  a  firm  friend  of  mine, 
and  always  behaved  to  me  with  the  utmost  kindness. 
If,  for  a  moment,  a  little  cloud  overhung  our  relations, 
I,  not  he,  was  in  fault,  and  this  cloud  soon  passed 
away  never  to  return.  I  was  also  extremely  fond  of 
his  wife.  She  was  the  most  gracious  and  affectionate 
among  women,  and  though  not  pretending  to  any 
special  cleverness,  had  always  lived  on  the  terms  of 
the  closest  intimacy  with  her  husband's  friends,  men 
for  the  most  part  of  the  highest  talents  and  acquire- 
ments. Distinguished  among  them  were  Sydney 
Smith,  Lord  Lyndhurst,  Lord  Brougham,  Baron 
Alderson,  Chief  Justice  Tindal,  and  David  Dundas. 
To  these,  if  it  were  worth  while,  many  fit  to  rank 
with  them  might  be  added.  The  result  was  that  she 
had  been  excellently  educated  by  this  intercourse 
with  wits  and  scholars  eminent  in  their  day,  and 
though  this  education  had  been  carried  on  in  a  some- 
what abnormal  fashion,  by  conversation  rather  than 
by  books,  it  was  not,  in  my  judgment,  any  the  worse 
on  that  account. 

Baron  Parke,  besides  his  knowledge  of  law  and 
powers  of  reasoning,  had  been  Chancellor's  medallist  at 
Cambridge  and  also  fourth  wrangler.  He  possessed, 
moreover,  a  great  deal  of  humour  and  was  a  first- 
rate  epigrammatist.  I  recollect  two  epigrams,  one  in 
Latin,  the  other  in  English,  both  worth  recording. 


218  BARON  PARKE  AN  EPIGRAMMATIST 

There  were  others  equally  good  in  their  way,  of 
which  I  remember  the  outlines,  but  as  they  are 
longer  and  more  elaborate,  I  could  only  quote  them 
imperfectly,  and,  that  being  so,  it  is  better  not  to 
quote  them  at  all.  Here  is  the  Latin  one.  Lady 
Parke  made  David  Dundas  on  his  birthday  a  present 
of  a  silver  saltcellar.  At  the  bottom  of  this  saltcellar 
were  engraved  these  two  following  lines,  dictated  by 
her  husband,  and  if  Martial  could  have  beaten  them, 
I  should  think  more  highly  of  his  wit  than  I  do  at 
present. 

Ecce  tibi  vacuum  dat  Parca  benigna  salinum  : 
Ipsos  jam  dederat  Parca  benigna  sales. 

The  second  was  improvised  whilst  we  were  walk- 
ing together  in  Ampthill  Park,  soon  after  the  Baron 
had  settled  himself  there.  It  was  a  severe  slap  in  the 
face  to  poor  old  Rogers,  the  poet,  and  one  which  I 
am  nearly  certain  he  had  not  deserved.  Lord  and 
Lady  Holland  had  preceded  the  Parkes  at  Ampthill. 
Now  Lady  Holland,  as  is  well  known,  ruled  her 
literary  vassals  with  a  rod  of  iron,  and  I  have  no 
doubt  that  the  unlucky  poet  who  composed  the  verses 
scourged  by  Parke's  epigram,  composed  them  under 
her  ladyship's  sternest  compulsion. 

There  is  a  magnificent  oak  near  the  house,  known 
as  the  '  King's  Oak.'  To  this  tree  was  attached  a 
wooden  placard,  differiog  from  ordinary  placards 
which  give  information  to  trespassers  that  they  will 
be  prosecuted,  and  convey  other  legal  notices,  in  this 
respect,  that  upon  it  were  painted  certain  blank  verses, 


MONSIEUR  MORT  219 

by  the  author  of  the  '  Pleasures  of  Memory/  as  was 
generally  believed,  and  very  poor  blank  verses  they 
were,  although  they  took  upon  themselves  to  announce 
publicly  that  even  oaks  must  yield  to  time,  and  that 
if  they  feel  any  hankering  after  immortality,  the  help 
of  the  poet  must  be  invoked.  Parke  cocked  his  eye, 
sparkling  with  pungent,  I  will  not  say  malicious  fun, 
and  commented  upon  the  blank  verse  in  the  following 
rhymed  couplet — 

I'll  bet  a  thousand  pounds,  and  Time  will  show  it, 
That  the  stout  oak  outlives  the  feeble  poet. 

To  the  best  of  my  belief,  these  lines  were  never 
written  down.  The  feeble  poet  (if  Rogers  were  the 
author  of  the  inscription)  was  a  frequent  guest  at 
Ampthill,  and  it  would  have  been  dangerous  to 
give  him  an  opportunity  of  inspecting  so  bitter  a 
criticism  upon  himself.  Though,  if  Tennyson  be 
accurate  in  estimating  his  own  future  renown  at 
'  half  the  lifetime  of  an  oak  '  (his  admirers,  of  whom 
I  am  one,  would  lay  odds  on  him  against  a  yew), 
Parke's  epigram  must  be  looked  upon,  though  Rogers 
himself  might  have  winced  under  it,  as  taking  an 
indulgent  view  of  the  banker-bard's  posthumous 
chances.  We  may  indeed  doubt  if  posthumous  is  an 
admissible  epithet  in  his  case.  Most  elderly  persons 
are  familiar  with  the  various  stories  about  him  and 
his  cadaverous  appearance.  How,  when  he  and  Moore 
called  upon  some  distinguished  Frenchman,  and 
Rogers  followed  the  footman  announcing  M.  Mort, 
the  startled  Parisian  jumped  up  in  a  panic  and  fled 


220       SYDNEY  SMITH'S  MOURNING  BRIDEGROOM 

for  his  life.  How,  when  there  was  a  rumour  that  he 
contemplated  marriage,  Sydney  Smith  suggested  the 
two  Miss  Berrys  as  bridesmaids,  the  sexton  as  best 
man,  and  a  certain  Mr.  Coffin,  a  clergyman  known 
at  that  time  in  London,  as  the  proper  person  to  offi- 
ciate at  the  wedding,  which  would  of  course  take 
place  in  the  Church  of  St.  Sepulchre,  &c.  How, 
being  with  him  in  the  Catacombs  at  Rome,  Lord 
Dudley  picked  up  a  skull,  looked  alternately  at  it 
and  his  friend's  ghastly  face,  and  then  solemnly  put 
it  down,  as  if,  having  made  a  careful  comparison 
between  the  two  deathlike  aspects,  he  was  thoroughly 
satisfied  that  the  one  was  the  image  of  the  other. 
Afterwards  Rogers  avenged  himself  for  this  insult 
in  the  two  famous  lines — 

Ward  has  no  heart  they  say,  but  I  deny  it ; 
He  has  a  heart,  and  gets  his  speeches  by  it. 

Dead  or  alive,  however,  he  appeared  on  the  face  of 
the  globe  for  many  years  after  composing  this  epi- 
gram. During  the  last  two  years  of  his  life  I  saw 
a  good  deal  of  him,  as  I  was  much  at  Brighton,  to 
which  place  he  retired  after  partially  recovering  from 
a  severe  accident.  He  had  been  knocked  over  by  a 
carriage  in  the  street,  or  rather  had  fallen  under  the 
imminent  peril  of  being  knocked  down,  and  broken  his 
thigh.  At  his  great  age,  the  bone  could  not  reknit 
itself,  so  that  he  never  walked  again.  Up  to  that 
time,  old  as  he  was,  and  ill  as  he  looked,  he  had  been 
wonderfully  active  and  independent.  Though  cele- 
brated for  the  quickness  and  neatness  of  his  repartees, 


ROGERS  AS  A  POET  221 

the  tinge  of  bitterness  that  ran  through  his  conversa- 
tion made  him  less  agreeable  to  listen  to  than  Sydney 
Smith,  nor  did  he  possess  anything  like  the  same 
affluence  and  variety  of  wit.  He  was,  moreover,  a 
disappointed  man ;  his  poetical  success,  which,  mainly 
owing  to  the  absence  of  powerful  competitors,  was 
at  first  very  considerable,  could  not  uphold  itself 
against  the  rush  of  popularity  lifting  up  Scott  and 
Byron  and  Campbell  far  above  him  ;  and  long  before 
he  died,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  and  Shelley  came 
also  to  the  front ;  so  that  he  gradually  found  him- 
self somewhat  in  the  position  of  the  pushing  Bible 
guest  (except  that  no  blame  attached  to  him  person- 
ally), and  began  with  sadness,  though  not  with 
shame,  'to  take  the  lowest  room.'  His  early  triumphs 
had  no  doubt  flattered  his  imagination  with  the  hope 
of  future  greatness,  and  when  this  hope  failed  to 
realise  itself,  his  temper  turned  somewhat  sour,  as 
indeed  did  his  face ;  still  this  '  vinegar  aspect '  did 
not  go  very  deep,  it  was  only  an  '  aspect/  and  never 
impaired  the  genuine  kindness  of  his  nature,  a  kind- 
ness always  ready  when  he  found  fitting  opportunities 
for  its  exercise. 

My  attendance  on  Baron  Parke  as  marshal  was  a 
pleasant  attendance,  and  brought  me  into  constant 
communication  with  other  distinguished  judges. 
Among  them  I  may  name  Baron  Alderson  and  Lord 
Denman,  beloved  by  everyone  who  knew  him.  I 
also  became  acquainted  with  the  leading  counsel  on 
several  circuits. 


222  SERJEANT  MAULE 

It  was  at  Gloucester,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  that 
my  Baron  came  into  collision  with  Serjeant  Maule 
funnily  enough.  Maule,  afterwards  the  well-known 
Baron  of  the  Exchequer,  was  engaged  in  a  case,  and 
as  Parke  thought,  kept  wasting  everybody's  time 
that  he  might  indulge  in  humorous  irrelevancies 
simply  to  please  himself.  '  Come,  come,  Brother 
Maule,  can't  you  get  on  a  little  faster  ?  I  must  be 
at  Stafford  to-night.'  The  Baron  interrupted  him 
thus,  but  Maule  was  the  last  person  in  the  world  to 
accept  a  snubbing  without  resistance,  and  he  answered 
as  follows  :  —  '  My  Lord,  I  should  be  most  happy  to 
oblige  your  lordship,  but  you  see,  just  at  present,  I 
am  not  Brother  Maule,  but  John  Robinson'  (giving 
his  client's  name),  '  who  has  not  the  least  wish  that 
your  lordship  should  get  to  Stafford  to  night  ;  in 
point  of  fact,  he  does  not  care  a  straw  whether  your 
lordship  ever  gets  to  Stafford  at  all.'  Of  course 
when  an  advocate  entrenches  himself  in  such  an  im- 
pregnable position  as  this,  the  judge  can  only  retreat  ; 
this  Parke  did  with  very  good  grace,  accepting  some 
sham  Greek  Iambics  of  mine  in  perfect  good  humour, 
he  even  contributed  to  them,  by  way  of  improving 
the  joke.  I  recollect  that  these  Greek  Iambics  began 
thus  — 

.  irpunqv  cv  ?>ofj.ot.(ri  Ko/m'ois 


How  they  went  on,  God  knows,  I  am  afraid  Mnemo- 
syne herself,  though  the  Mother  of  the  Muses,  could  not 
supply  the  end  to  my  memory.  Baron  Parke  was 


COURVOISIER'S  CONFESSION  223 

the  judge  who  tried  Courvoisier  for  the  startling 
murder  of  Lord  William  Russell  at  his  house  in 
Norfolk  Street.  Phillips,  a  well-known  Irish  bar- 
rister, celebrated  for  his  persuasive  eloquence,  had 
undertaken  the  defence,  when  he  was  suddenly 
worried  and  embarrassed  by  the  prisoner's  unlocked 
for  confession  of  his  guilt.  This  did  not  of  itself 
alter  his  duty  to  his  client,  because  a  man  is  not 
hanged  for  committing  murder,  but  for  having  the 
act  of  murder  proved  against  him  by  sufficient  legal 
evidence,  and  in  England,  at  any  rate,  it  is  thought 
better  that  no  certainty  should  be  strong  enough  to 
put  the  rope  round  a  man's  neck,  unless  it  be  a 
legal  certainty.  Still,  a  counsel  whose  business  it  is 
to  get  an  accused  person  off,  would  rather  know  no 
more  about  the  matter  than  the  public  at  large ;  he 
is  then  able  to  insist  upon  all  the  points  which  tell 
in  his  client's  favour  without  any  difficulty  or 
delicacy  towards  others.  In  Courvoisier's  case,  the 
only  possible  exculpation  was  to  show  that  the 
murder  might  have  been  committed  by  another  of 
Lord  William's  servants,  and  to  do  this,  knowing  all 
the  time  that  the  other  servants  must  be  perfectly 
innocent,  might  well  perplex  the  most  resolute  and 
unhesitating  of  advocates.  In  fact  the  world  at  large 
afterwards  severely  blamed  Mr.  Phillips  for  having 
pointed  out  to  the  jury  that  one  of  the  women 
servants  was  as  much  open  to  suspicion  as  his  client. 
However,  he  had  taken' his  precautions  very  artfully  ; 
he  felt  that  he  might  confide  in  Parke's  passion  for 


224  OBLIGATIONS  OF  A  BARRISTER 

the  'nice  sharp  quillets  of  the  law/  and  that  his 
knowledge  of  the  prisoner's  guilt  would  rather 
strengthen  than  impair  his  determination  to  secure 
for  him  the  full  benefit  of  any  presentable  doubts, 
that  rose  up  in  the  course  of  the  trial.  Anyhow  he 
begged  Parke  to  watch  over  the  proceedings,  and  to 
interfere  at  once  if  he  overstepped  the  proper  limits  of 
advocacy.  Parke  promised  to  do  this,  but  held  his 
tongue  throughout  the  trial,  and  maintained  after- 
wards to  the  last,  that  Phillips  had  not  exceeded  his 
privileges  in  any  part  of  the  defence.  No  doubt 
Parke  would  have  affirmed  it  to  be  the  duty  of  a  man 
holding  a  brief  for  any  criminal,  to  put  aside  his  per- 
sonal opinions,  and  to  fight  against  a  conviction,  as  a 
doctor  fights  against  disease,  to  the  last.  A  physician 
keeps  in  life  by  drugs  and  stimulants,  though  he 
sees  how  useless  his  efforts  are.  He  does  this  be- 
cause he  knows  that  if  he  depart  from  the  simple  rule 
of  facing  death  as  an  enemy,  with  whom  no  com- 
promise can  be  made,  he  may  be  gradually  opening 
a  door  to  doubtful  and  dangerous  practices.  I  think, 
upon  the  whole,  that  Parke  was  right ;  Law,  in  the 
eyes  of  a  barrister,  is,  or  ought  to  be,  the  life  of  our 
social  system  ;  his  business  is  to  uphold  it,  without 
looking  to  the  right  or  left. 

The  answer  of  another  well-known  judge,  who 
when  he  was  asked  whether  anyone  with  a  tender 
conscience  could  practise  in  the  law,  replied  '  Tender, 
oh  yes,  undoubtedly,  tender,  but  not  raw/  seems  to 
me  to  put  the  matter  in  its  true  light.  Certainly 


LADY  KIDLEY  AND  MRS.  CHARLES  HOWARD      225 

a  counsel  must  not  be  dishonest,  but  neither  should 
he  be  squeamish  or  overscrupulous  in  the  exercise 
of  his  profession,  because,  if  he  be,  he  undermines 
one  of  its  greatest  powers,  the  power,  I  mean,  of 
maintaining  liberty  against  tyranny,  either  from 
above  or  below.  Whilst  I  was  thrown  with  Baron 
and  Lady  Parke,  first  as  marshal  or  legal  aide-de- 
camp, and  secondly  as  an  old  family  friend,  his 
two  daughters,  Cecilia,  afterwards  Lady  Ridley,  and 
Mary,  who  became  Mrs.  Charles  Howard,  were  in 

*   ' 

the  first  bloom  of  their  youth.  Both  of  them  being 
beautiful  and  also  charming,  they  were  regarded 
by  all  the  habitual  visitors  at  Ampthill  with  the 
warmest  affection,  and,  alas,  by  dying  as  they  both 
did  in  their  prime,  they  left  a  gap  in  the  lives  of  those 
who  loved  them  which  nothing  ever  filled  up  ;  but, 
at  the  time  I  am  speaking  of,  the  future  before  them 
seemed  full  of  hope  and  brightness,  and  the  present, 
at  any  rate,  was  without  a  cloud.  The  Parkes  had 
previously  lived  in  Yorkshire,  in  different  parts  of 
the  county,  but  Ampthill  in  Bedfordshire  was  the 
first  place  where  they  established  themselves  perma- 
nently in  a  country  house.  The  young  ladies,  as  was 
natural,  undertook  the  parts  usually  played  by  the 
girls  who  belong  to  the  squire's  family ;  they  visited 
the  poor,  they  presided  over  the  distribution  of  coats 
and  blankets  among  the  old  people,  and  tried  to  help 
the  schoolmistress  in  the  education  of  her  children. 
It  must  be  added  that  Lady  Holland,  too  completely 
absorbed  in  giving  party  dinners,  and  in  bullying  her 


226          EXAMINATION  OF  SCHOOL  CHILDREN 

literary  satellites  to  care  for  meaner  things,  had  left 
them  a  great  deal  to  do.  The  theological  acquire- 
ments of  their  young  protegees  had  not  advanced 
much  under  her  liberal  superintendence.  One  Sunday, 
for  some  reason  that  has  escaped  me,  the  school  chil- 
dren, contrary  to  the  usual  practice,  had  been  brought 
up  to  the  house  for  their  weekly  examination,  with 
tea  and  buns  looming  in  the  distance.  We  who 
were  staying  at  Ampthill,  unexpectedly  pressed  into 
the  service,  found  ourselves  turned  into  special 
examiners  for  the  nonce  ;  and  they  handed  a  small 
girl  of  about  ten  over  to  me,  that  I  might  put  her 
through  her  facings  in  the  Catechism. 

The  reader  will  be  perhaps  surprised  to  learn,  that 
I,  aged  about  five-and-twenty,  who  because  I  had  taken 
a  first  class  at  Oxford  reckoned  myself  a  clever  fellow, 
was  a  bit  of  a  prig,  and,  if  I  were  deficient  in  any- 
thing, it  certainly  was  not  in  self-conceit.  I  therefore 
undertook  my  task  with  some  half-developed  intention 
of  cutting  a  considerable  figure.  At  first  I  seemed 
likely  to  be  successful,  but  after  the  manner  of  Prince 
Rupert  at  Marston  Moor,  my  brilliant  onset,  through 
an  unforeseen  movement  of  the  enemy,  was  converted 
into  a  disastrous  rout.  Still  I  showed  myself,  I 
think,  superior  to  Prince  Rupert  in  this  respect,  that 
if  I  failed  to  teach,  I  gathered  out  of  my  failure  some 
instruction  for  myself,  which  he  never  managed  to 
do.  My  small  damsel  repeated  her  paragraphs 
glibly  enough,  but  it  struck  me,  as  a  young  wise- 
acre, that  she  did  not  understand  what  she  was  say- 


MY  FAILURE  227 

ing,  and  accordingly  I  laid  myself  out  to  improve 
her  understanding.  A  straightforward  little  wench 
enough,  she  had  no  pretensions,  and  the  following 
dialogue  passed  between  us  : — '  Now,  my  dear,  you 
have  been  talking  to  me  about  a  "  state  of  salvation." 
Do  you  know  what  a  state  of  salvation  means  ?  ' 
'  No,  your  honour. '  l  Do  you  know  who  your 
Saviour  is  ?  '  '  No,  your  honour.'  '  Do  you  know 
what  to  save  is  ? '  '  No,  your  honour/  '  Ah,  I  see. 
Do  you  know  what  being  in  a  pond  is  ? '  '  Yes, 
your  honour.'  '  If  you  fell  into  a  pond  and  anyone 
pulled  you  out,  you  would  thank  him  I  suppose.' 
'  Yes,  your  honour.'  '  Well,  as  far  as  the  pond  goes, 
he  would  save  you,  he  would  be  your  saviour ;  but 
there  is  a  much  worse  place  than  a  pond  to  fall  into 
— can  you  tell  me  what  that  place  is  ? '  *  Yes,  your 
honour.  Hell,  your  honour.'  '  Good  little  girl,'  I 
cried  out  rejoicingly,  forgetting,  in  my  premature  ex- 
ultation, that  the  fear  of  hell,  rather  than  the  hope  of 
heaven,  often  works  upon  the  childish  imagination  as 
the  chief  incitement  to  religion,  and  that  children  know 
more  of  that  subdivision  of  theology  than  of  any  other. 
I  now  felt  secure  of  victory,  and  after  two  or  three 
more  questions,  I  addressed  her  with  the  utmost  confi- 
dence. l  Now  then,  you  can  tell  me  what  a  state  of  sal- 
vation means.'  '  Yes,  your  honour.'  '  What  is  it,  my 
dear  ?  '  '  Being  in  a  pond,  your  honour.'  l  Ibi  omnis 
effusus  labor.'  I  had  to  strike  my  flag  and  submit 
to  be  laughed  at  without  resistance,  but  I  fully  real- 
ised this  truth,  that  it  is  wiser  to  let  Christian  words 


228    HOW  CHILDREN  SHOULD  BE  TAUGHT 

and  phrases  sink  into  a  child's  brain,  and  take  root 
there  so  that  the  meaning  may  grow  up  of  its  own 
accord,  as  a  plant  grows  from  its  seed,  than  to  try 
and  ripen  them  before  their  time  by  artificial  means. 
I  resolved,  if  ever  I  found  myself  in  a  similar  pre- 
dicament later  on,  not  again  to  attempt  being  too 
clever  by  half. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

Failure  to  learn  German — Goethe's  treatment  of  Madame  von  Stein — 
Called  to  the  Bar — Mr.  Peard — Sam  Warren — Roebuck — Cresswell 
— Alexander — Grand  courts — Circuit  and  Quarter  Sessions — Carlyle 
at  Quarter  Sessions — David  Dundas — James  Wortley — Pilgrimage 
to  John  Scott's — Dr.  Johnson  and  racehorses — Charles  Greville 
at  York  Races — Dundas  at  whist — Stirling  of  Keir — Murphy — 
Baron  Alderson. 

THE  days  when  I  visited  at  Ampthill  were  among 
the  happiest  days  of  my  life,  but  the  girls  grew  up 
and  were  married,  my  marshalship  came  to  an  end, 
and  the  brightness  passed  away.  I  ought  to  have 
been  studying  law  hard,  but  somehow  or  other  I  could 
not  overcome  that  unfortunate  habit  of  trusting  to 
next  Monday,  and  I  got  less  from  my  excellent 
teachers,  William  Plunket  and  Hassard  Home  Dodg- 
son,  than  I  ought  to  have  done.  Looking  back  at 
that  part  of  my  life,  I  must  say  that  though  I  am 
glad  I  was  called  to  the  Bar,  I  regret  that  I  ever 
opened  a  law  book ;  the  few  easy  briefs  that  were 
put  into  my  hands  required  nothing  but  common 
sense  to  do  justice  to  them,  and  the  law  of  registra- 
tion, of  which  as  a  revising  barrister  I  was  bound  to 
know  something,  in  those  early  days  was  so  simple 
that  it  must  have  given  me  but  little  trouble.  But 


230  WANT  OF  RESOLUTION 

owing  to  my  half  study  of  the  law  I  fell  between  two 
stools.  I  gave  up  too  much  time  to  conveyancing, 
pleading,  and  the  like,  to  make  a  proper  use  of  my 
leisure  for  other  kinds  of  reading,  which,  as  it  has 
turned  out,  would  probably  have  been  more  valuable 
to  me,  whilst  yet  I  paid  a  certain  attention  to 
literature,  and  thereby  was  prevented  from  acquiring 
any  solid  or  extensive  knowledge  of  law.  If  I 
had  contented  myself  with  eating  my  dinners  at  the 
Temple,  and  devoting  the  time  I  wasted  upon  Fearne 
and  his  contingent  remainders,  and  other  such  books, 
to  history,  poetry,  and  modern  languages,  I  think  I 
should  have  done  better  for  myself  upon  the  whole, 
without  being  for  any  practical  purpose  a  worse 
lawyer.  One  of  the  great  mischiefs  resulting  from 
my  weakness  of  will  and  want  of  definite  aims,  is 
that  I  have  never  made  any  real  progress  in  the 
German  language,  I  call  myself  an  educated  man, 
and  yet  am  unable  to  grapple  with  the  works  of 
Goethe.  By  the  help  of  cribs  and  dictionaries  I  can 
just  discern  that  he  is  a  splendid  lyrical  poet.  But 
the  rest  of  his  greatness  is  more  or  less  out  of  my 
ken,  and  I  therefore  feel  in  the  presence  of  his  nume- 
rous volumes  naked  and  ashamed.  Of  Goethe  him- 
self, moreover,  as  a  man,  it  is  difficult  to  form  a  just 
estimate  without  understanding  the  German  language, 
and  the  German  nature,  better  than  I  understand  them 
at  present.  His  fellow-countrymen  seem  to  have 
condoned  his  leaning  towards  Napoleon  and  the 
French,  in  the  great  crisis  of  1813,  and  as  a  foreigner 


GOETHE  AND  WOMEN  231 

it  is  not  my  business  to  try  and  overrule  their 
judgment. 

His  treatment  of  women  generally,  and  of  Madame 
von  Stein  in  particular,  does  not  please  me,  but  if  lie 
behaved  selfishly  in  such  matters,  so  do  most  other 
men,  and  the  self  of  a  Goethe,  as  of  one  born  for  the 
universe,  has  perhaps  a  greater  claim  to  indulgence 
than  that  of  ordinary  persons.  The  one  plea  I  can- 
not accept  (I  doubt  whether  he  would  have  accepted 
it  himself),  is  the  extenuating  circumstance,  that 
though  he  may  have  broken  Madame  von  Stein's 
heart,  he  attended  to  her  stomach  and  constantly  sent 
her  from  his  own  table  (a  table  at  which  he  was  sit- 
ting with  the  rival  woman  whom  he  had  literally 
picked  out  of  the  street)  portions  of  any  dish  that 
pleased  his  own  palate.  A  more  ridiculous  and  sordid 
apology  never,  I  should  say,  had  been  put  forward 
on  behalf  of  a  faithless  lover.  How  the  lady  re- 
ceived these  kitchen-grate  atonements  we  are  not 
told.  I  can  only  hope  that  she  had  a  pet  dog  with 
a  large  appetite. 

In  the  meantime,  whilst  I  was  reading  law  in  this 
half-hearted  kind  of  way,  German  scarcely  at  all,  the 
hours  went  on  and  my  day  arrived  for  being  called 
to  the  Bar.  Fifty  years  ago,  the  Benchers  did  not 
trouble  themselves  about  your  acquirements.  You 
procured  sureties  for  solvency  and  good  conduct,  that 
was  enough  for  them.  If  you  knew  nothing  you 
were  not  likely  to  make  your  fortune  as  a  lawyer ; 
but  that  was  your  business  and  not  theirs.  The 

16 


232  CALLED  TO  THE  BAR 

Inner  Temple  therefore  opened  its  arms  to  me  with- 
out scruple,  and  one  day  after  dinner,  in  company 
with  thirteen  or  fourteen  other  students,  I  obtained 
my  credentials  as  a  barrister.  The  most  remarkable 
person  in  our  actual  batch  was  Mr.  Peard,  known 
afterwards  much  more  widely  as  '  Garibaldi's  Eng- 
lishman.' Then  a  young  man  of  great  stature  and 
extraordinary  muscular  strength,  he  had  been  ter- 
rible for  years  to  the  Oxford  tag-rag  and  bob- tail 
in  a  town  and  gown  row ;  famous  also  among  the 
many  famous  oars  of  an  invincible  Exeter  boat.  Old 
Stephen  Davis,  the  well-known  Isis  waterman,  full  of 
years  and  matchless  in  experience,  had  never  known 
such  a  crew.  In  describing  them,  he  distinguished, 
graphically  enough,  between  two  different  kinds  of 
physical  power.  '  Mr.  Copleston/  he  said  (he  was 
the  stroke  oar)  'is  all  brass  wire,  and  as  for  Mr. 
Peard,  he's  got  the  shoulders  of  a  bull.' 

I  made  Mr.  Peard' s  acquaintance  that  evening, 
but  I  never  heard  of  him  again  till  after  he  had 
gained  his  honours  in  Italy.  Nay,  upon  recollection, 
I  cannot  quite  say  that.  There  was  a  story  of  a 
wonderful  Bacchanalian  feat  achieved  by  him  in  the 
Temple  Hall,  on  what  we  used  to  call  a  gaudy  day. 
I  must  add,  that  I  do  not  believe  he  was  in  the  least 
given  to  drinking.  His  services  to  Garibaldi,  re- 
quiring as  they  did,  tact,  discretion,  and  sobriety  of 
mind,  imply  the  contrary.  He  was  also  a  man  of 
cultivated  tastes,  with  a  real  talent  for  painting,  so 
that  nothing  is  less  likely  than  that  he  should  have 


THE  CUP  OF  HERCULES  233 

been  a  sot.  I  apprehend  that  in  the  case  I  am 
speaking  of,  his  action  was  nothing  more  than  a 
Berserker-like  freak,  suggested  by  a  tempting  oppor- 
tunity. On  these  gaudy  days,  a  loving  cup  which 
held  about  two  quarts  of  spiced  and  sweetened  wine 
went  its  rounds.  By  the  special  intervention  of 
Zeus,  or  some  other  god,  the  man  sitting  just  above 
Peard  drained  the  last  drops  of  the  flagon,  so  that  it 
was  placed  in  Peard's  hands  refilled  to  the  brim. 
Such  a  prospect  of  proving  himself  the  true  modern 
representative  of  Alcmena's  son,  by  tossing  off  this 
cup  of  Hercules  with  a  light  heart,  was  not  to  be 
thrown  away.  Accordingly  he  stood  up  in  the  sight 
of  men  and  angels,  and  drank  it  dry  at  a  pull.  He 
sat  down  much  applauded,  an  applause  in  which  old 
Sam  Johnson,  with  his  l  claret  for  boys,  port  for 
men,  and  brandy  for  heroes,'  would  probably  have 
joined. 

Shortly  after  my  call  to  the  Bar,  I  joined  the 
Northern  Circuit,  hoping  that  my  Yorkshire  connec- 
tions might  be  useful  allies,  and  try,  at  least,  to  help 
me  on  in  my  profession.  In  this  hope  I  was  dis- 
appointed, unless  indeed  I  am  to  reckon  among 
them  an  old  butler  with  whom  I  used  to  go  out 
shooting  as  a  boy.  He  must  have  been  himself  a 
born  advocate,  as  he  actually  broke  through  the 
guard  of  an  ancient  solicitor,  no  trifling  feat  of 
oratory,  and  persuaded  him  to  give  me  a  thirty- 
guinea  brief,  the  only  important  one  I  ever  fingered 
during  my  legal  career.  Think  of  a  butler  melting 


234         AN  ELOQUENT  BUTLER— SAM  WARREN 

an  attorney's  heart  by  recalling  my  grandfather's 
kindness  to  him  long  before  when  he  made  his  start 
in  life.  Had  I  been  like  Miss  Edge  worth's  Alfred 
Percy  in  '  Patronage/  this  would  of  course  have  been 
the  beginning  of  a  distinguished  career  ;  as  it  hap- 
pened, I  had  very  little  to  do  with  the  conduct  of  the 
case,  which  ended  in  a  compromise,  and  left  me,  as 
to  any  prospect  of  future  success,  very  much  in  my 
old  position. 

After  having  been  called  to  the  Bar,  I  joined  the 
Northern  Circuit.  As  the  chief  advantage  I  gained 
from  that  proceeding  was  the  acquaintanceship  of  other 
interesting  men,  I  shall  begin  with  the  one  in  whose 
company  I  travelled  down  to  York  for  my  first 
circuit.  This  was  Sam  Warren.  He  had  by  that 
time  acquired  a  considerable  reputation,  and  had  no 
doubt  at  all  that  he  was  going  to  do  great  things, 
to  occupy  the  Woolsack,  after  leading  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  generally  dazzling  mankind.  His 
'  Diary  of  a  Late  Physician  '  produced  a  great  effect, 
partly,  I  think,  under  the  mistaken  impression  that  it 
had  been  bequeathed  to  the  world  by  a  real  practising 
physician,  and  therefore  dealt  with  interesting  facts, 
and  not  only  with  amusing  fancies.  But  partly  also 
because,  though  somewhat  rough,  if  not  coarse  in  tex- 
ture, it  gave  evidence  of  talent,  and  was  reasonably  held 
to  be  a  work  of  promise.  Sam  was  a  very  good  fellow 
and  a  capital  talker,  but  he  had  unfortunately  been 
bred  up  in  small  dissenting  schools,  where  he  found 
nobody  able  to  make  him  gallop.  He  therefore 


SAM  WARREN  AND   DAVID  DUNDAS  235 

fancied  himself  a  sort  of  St.  Simon  (the  modern  Eclipse 
I  mean,  not  that  inferior  person  the  French  memoir 
writer),  and  these  opinions  of  his  being  scarcely  ac- 
cepted by  other  members  of  the  circuit,  placed  him 
now  and  then  in  a  false  position.  The  very  first  day 
of  his  appearance  at  mess  he  had  been  laying  down 
the  law  at  the  lower  end  of  the  table  with  his  ordi- 
nary emphasis.  During  this  process,  David  Dundas, 
sitting  much  higher  up,  got  into  a  dispute  with  an 
ancient  waiter,  who  had  accustomed  himself  to  bully 
the  barristers  from  generation  to  generation,  and 
called  him  '  an  old  coxcomb.'  Warren's  ear  caught 
the  substantive,  and  he  being  filled  with  an  idea  that 
the  leaders  of  the  circuit  were  watching  his  Avatar 
with  jealous  apprehension,  thought  the  expression 
aimed  at  him,  and  intended  as  a  deliberate  insult. 
Accordingly,  after  dinner,  before  Dundas  had  half 
got  through  his  first  brief,  he  received  a  visit  from  a 
stuttering  satellite  of  Warren's,  demanding  satisfac- 
tion. Dundas  stared,  and  on  learning  the  nature  of 
the  supposed  offence,  simply  replied  :  '  Sir,  all  I  have 
to  say  is  that  Mr.  Warren's  image  never  crossed  my 
mind  during  the  whole  of  the  day.'  '  Th — th — then, 
sir/  retorted  the  stammering  belligerent,  '  i — i — if 
you  did  not  mean  Mr.  Warren,  d — d — did  you 
mean  me  ? '  '  You,  sir,'  was  the  answer ;  if  you 
will  forgive  me  for  saying  so,  I  did  not  know 
that  you  were  in  rerum  naturd.'  This  foolish  and 
restless  vanity  on  Warren's  part  naturally  created 
some  irritation.  He  then  chose  to  imagine  that  a 


236  SAM  WARREN— MURPHY— ROEBUCK 

conspiracy  had  been  formed  to  prevent  his  matchless 
talents  from  having  fair  play,  and  thereupon  com- 
plained to  Murphy,  a  brilliant  and  careless  Irishman, 
of  his  secret  enemies.  All  the  consolation  he  got 
amounted  to  this  :  '  Enemies,  God  bless  my  soul, 
you've  no  enemies  but  yourself,  and  you  would  not 
be  half  a  bad  fellow  if  you  were  not  such  a  damned 
vapouring  jackass.'  These  lessons,  I  may  add,  were 
not  thrown  away  upon  Warren ;  he  sobered  down 
by  degrees,  and  being  clever,  pleasant,  and  good- 
humoured,  grew  in  popularity,  but  though  generally 
liked,  he  was  not  much  employed  by  the  Yorkshire 
attorneys.  When  employed,  though  he  got  through 
his  work  reasonably  well,  he  failed  to  impress  his 
hearers  either  as  a  remarkable  advocate  or  a  profound 
lawyer,  and  was,  I  think,  fortunate  hi  obtaining  a 
Lunacy  Commissionership.  This  gave  him  a  good 
income  and  a  respectable  position,  thereby  enabling 
him  to  cultivate  literature  in  his  leisure  moments,  not 
without  a  measure  of  success. 

Another  man,  well  known  afterwards  as  an  eager 
politician  and  an  able  member  of  Parliament,  was 
Roebuck.  I  think  Roebuck  showed  himself  at  his 
best  whilst  on  circuit.  When  he  arrived  in  England 
from  Canada,  some  opposition  to  his  acceptance  among 
us  was  threatened  for  an  instant,  but  we,  the  majority 
of  the  barristers  I  mean,  put  aside  any  such  objec- 
tions as  irrelevant.  We  said,  '  There  is  no  stain  on 
Mr.  Roebuck's  personal  character ;  he  may  be  trusted 
to  behave  like  a  gentleman  and  a  man  of  honour  in  all 


ROEBUCK  KEEPS  HIS  TEMPER  237 

the  relations  of  life,  and  as  to  his  being  a  Republican, 
if  he  be  one,  that  is  no  business  of  ours.'  He  was 
not  only  elected  a  member  of  the  Bar  mess  at  once, 
but  proposed  by  Jim  Wortley,  perhaps  the  leading 
Conservative,  both  in  social  position  and  professional 
standing,  among  the  Yorkshire  lawyers.  Roebuck 
felt,  I  think,  that  in  this  matter  not  only  had  we  done 
him  justice,  but  done  it  in  a  kindly  spirit,  and  ac- 
cordingly, though  his  temper  was  apt  enough  to  lead 
him  into  disputes  and  quarrels  elsewhere,  he  hardly 
ever  gave  way  to  it  on  circuit.  He  never  obtained,  I 
doubt  whether  he  ever  aimed  at,  much  practice  at 
the  Bar,  looking  upon  the  legal  profession,  I  imagine, 
merely  as  a  stepping-stone  to  that  parliamentary 
career  which  was  the  real  object  of  his  ambition,  but 
whenever  he  spoke,  he  spoke  with  considerable  effect. 
His  style  being  clear,  terse,  and  logical,  with  some- 
thing of  passion  condensed  below  the  surface,  it  lifted 
him,  as  a  rule,  a  good  deal  above  the  mere  argumen- 
tative pleader. 

The  two  leading  advocates  of  my  day  were  Cress- 
well  and  Alexander.  Cresswell,  a  thoroughly  accom- 
plished lawyer,  dexterous,  versatile,  and  self-possessed, 
had  much  the  higher  reputation  of  the  two.  This 
reputation  he  maintained  as  a  judge.  And  to  be 
equally  good  in  court  and  on  the  bench  is  anything 
but  common.  Alexander,  though  fluent  of  speech, 
and  sufficiently  skilful  in  managing  his  cases,  was  by 
no  means  Cresswell's  equal  in  capacity  or  learning. 
Out  of  his  wig  and  gown,  I  may  say  I  thought  him 


238  CRESSWELL  AND  ALEXANDER 

a  very  second-rate  sort  of  person.  In  point  of  fact 
I  believed  at  the  time  one  cause  of  his  success  to 
be  this,  that  he  accomplished  all  through  a  sort  of 
instinct  which  others  had  to  learn  by  thought,  labour, 
and  experience.  Men  more  highly  educated,  and  of 
finer  intellects,  could  not  swim  through  the  platitudes 
and  commonplaces  out  of  which  a  nisi-prius  speech 
is  usually  made  up  until  they  had  educated  them- 
selves into  the  practice  as  artists,  but  Alexander 
moved  about  in  these  congenial  elements  as  easily 
and  naturally  as  a  fish  glides  along  under  water.  I 
recollect  dining  with  him  alone,  when  we  both 
happened  to  be  late  for  mess,  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  his  views  of  life  and  his  manner  of  express- 
ing them,  were  just  such  as  would  have  done  him 
good  service  if  communicated  to  a  jury.  I  may 
add  that,  not  being  on  duty  as  a  juryman,  this 
style  of  conversation  did  not  interest  me  in  the 
least.  He  was  somewhat  vain,  and  therefore  a  little 
pushing  and  presumptuous.  An  attempt  of  his  to 
speak  French  on  one  occasion  was  made  use  of  to 
turn  him  into  ridicule  ;  not  ill-natured  ridicule — we 
were  all  exposed  to  it,  and  had  to  accept  it  without 
flinching  in  our  turns,  if  the  appointed  official  of 
Momus,  on  our  so-called  grand  nights,  thought  us 
worth  noticing — but  still  good,  broad  satire,  that 
would  not  have  required  much  alteration  to  play  its 
part  perfectly  well  in  the  Palace  of  Truth. 

Judge  Williams,  who  was  coming  the  Northern 
Circuit  in  a  week  or  so,  had  invited  all  the  barristers 


GRAND  COURTS  239 

— he  himself  had  been  a  Northern  Circuiter — to  a  great 
legal  dinner  before  he  started  for  York.  By  some 
accident  or  other,  an  irrelevant  foreign  Duke,  having 
mistaken  his  own  day,  found  himself  a  solitary  wan- 
derer in  the  midst  of  this  alien  crowd.  Alexander,  as 
the  senior  Queen's  Counsel  present,  took  upon  himself, 
so  at  least  it  was  said  afterwards,  to  explain  matters 
to  the  stranger.  According  to  the  comic  Attorney- 
General  of  the  next  festive  dinner,  what  followed  was 
this.  Alexander's  French  being  as  unintelligible  to 
the  person  addressed  as  if  it  had  been  Hebrew- Greek 
(whatever  that  traditional  dialect  may  be),  Wight- 
man,  strong  in  black-letter  lore,  pushed  him  aside, 
exclaiming,  'Be  off!  don't  you  see  that  he  belongs 
to  the  good  old  school,  your  modern  slang  is  quite 
thrown  away  upon  him  ;  let  me  speak  to  him  in  the 
right  sort  of  language,  and  there  will  be  no  further 
difficulty.'  Then  he  straightway  addressed  the  unex- 
pected guest  in  our  ancient  law  French :  '  Ceo  e  ell 
maison  del  Williams  Justice,  peradventure,  vous  etes 
nemi  invite*. '  Whether  this  older  tongue  was  better 
suited  to  the  high-bred  foreigner  than  the  Alexandrine 
French,  the  Attorney- General  failed  to  inform  us. 
There  are  many  valuable  specimens  of  wit  and  humour 
hidden  away  in  the  grand  night  archives,  and  I  wish 
they  could  be  made  public.  As  a  rule,  the  most 
notable  performers  who  came  forward  to  play  these 
parts  of  Attorney  and  Solicitor- General  at  the  dinners 
in  question  were  not  our  most  fluent  and  witty 
talkers,  as  for  instance,  Murphy  or  David  Dundas  ; 


240  VIBGILIAN  ECLOGUE 

on  the  contrary,  they  were  dry,  silent  men,  who 
never  said  a  word  elsewhere,  accumulating  and  keep- 
ing in  reserve  stores  of  fun  and  fancy  which  they 
tapped  on  these  occasions  only.  Such  a  man  was 
Adolphus  the  reporter,  well  known  as  the  author  of 
that  admirable  piece  of  criticism  identifying  "Walter 
Scott  with  the  author  of  'Waverley,'  long  before 
Scott  had  made  his  own  confession,  and  called  upon 
Robertson  to  emulate  his  candour  by  acknowledging 
himself  the  *  murderer  of  Begbie.' 

A  sort  of  Virgilian  eclogue,  full  of  brilliant  anti- 
thesis, comes  back  to  me.  It  is  supposed  to  be  a 
conversation  which  took  place  on  a  short  holiday  tour 
in  Cumberland  between  a  special  pleader  and  an 
advocate  strong  in  the  criminal  court.  I  wish  I 
could  remember  the  whole  of  it,  but  nothing  has 
remained  with  me  except  the  last  five  lines  : 

See  one  by  one  the  pleasure  boats  forsake 

This  land  with  water  covered*  called  the  lake. 

Let  us  return,  the  inn  is  somewhat  far, 

Cold  are  the  dews,  though  bright  the  evening  star, 

And  Wightman  might  drop  in,  and  eat  our  char. 

The  ukases  of  these  grand  courts  were  carried  into 
effect  with  inflexible  resolution.  An  unfortunate 
barrister  passed  through  York  on  a  night  coach 
whilst  one  of  our  festivals  was  in  operation.  Now, 
by  being  in  the  town  without  attending  this  solemn 
assembly,  the  miserable  man  had  violated  one  of  the 
fundamental  rules  of  our  august  community,  and 

1  The  proper  legal  description  of  a  lake  or  pond. 


JUDGMENT  EXECUTED  241 

accordingly  punishment,  in  the  shape  of  the  robust 
and  impetuous  Robert  Hildyard,  fell  upon  him  like  a 
thunderbolt.  The  coach  stopped  at  its  appointed  inn, 
and  the  passenger  in  question  found  himself  at  once 
collared  and  handcuffed  by  this  improvised  police* 
man  from  the  grand  court.  He  was  allowed  by  his 
chivalrous  captor  to  dispose  of  the  place  he  had 
taken  and  paid  for  through  a  sort  of  extemporary 
auction,  but  the  bargain  once  concluded,  he  was 
marched  off  to  the  judgment  seat,  fined  and  detained 
at  York  for  the  night.  In  fact,  we  were  members  of  a 
very  rough  republic,  bound  to  submit  to  the  edicts  of 
those  in  authority,  much  as  the  Birmingham  Liberals 
have  to  bow  down  to  Mr.  Schnadhorst  and  his  Cau- 
cuses, except  that  with  us  the  processes  were  pleasant 
and  amusing,  and  the  tyranny  humorous  only,  instead 
of  being  harsh  and  sullen.  The  Quarter  Sessions,  on 
the  other  hand,  from  their  frequent  recurrence,  and 
from  our  having  to  establish  ourselves  at  inns,  instead 
of  taking  to  comfortable  lodgings  in  the  county  towns, 
were  tiresome  enough.  Sometimes  indeed  we  got  away 
from  the  larger  places,  to  find  fresh  air  and  pleasant 
walks  at  Skipton  in  Craven,  or  some  such  rural  village. 
A  good  many  of  us  used  to  spend  two  or  three  days 
there,  without  any  hope  of  briefs,  simply  to  refresh 
ourselves  after  seeing  and  smelling  the  rivulets  of 
Bradford — rivulets  dressed  up  in  all  the  colours  of  the 
rainbow,  and  running  pink  on  one  morning,  green 
on  another,  and  blue  on  a  third,  according  to  the  dye 
which  happened  to  be  in  the  ascendent.  The  country 


242  QUARTER  SESSIONS  AT  SKIPTON 

folks  did  not  quite  understand  why  we  appeared 
among  them,  and  I  recollect  a  jolly  farmer,  when 
fifteen  or  sixteen  of  us,  bewigged  and  begowned, 
were  streaming  down  into  court  together,  calling  out 
as  we  passed  him  in  a  tone  of  cordial  sympathy,  '  Ah, 
gentlemen,  gentlemen,  I'm  sadly  afeared  there  ain't 
a  job  apiece  for  all  of  you.' 

On  another  occasion,  at  Skipton  also,  unless  my 
memory  deceives  me,  we  were  rewarded  for  our  pil- 
grimage by  a  splendid  outburst  of  eloquence  from  the 
local  chairman.  There  had  been  a  serious  conflict  be- 
tween some  English  and  Irish  labourers,  in  which  the 
Englishmen  had  behaved  as  ill  as  possible.  Out- 
numbering their  Irish  competitors,  they  fell  upon 
them  with  the  utmost  fury,  and  nearly  drowned  one 
poor  fellow  by  ducking  him  in  the  river  until  it 
became  a  mere  chance  whether  he  recovered  or  not. 
However,  when  the  trial  came  on,  the  rioters,  as  ad- 
vised by  their  solicitors,  pleaded  guilty,  and  expressed 
a  proper  regret  for  their  misconduct,  in  the  hope — a 
hope  I  daresay  realised — of  obtaining  a  milder  sen- 
tence than  would  have  fallen  to  their  lot  had  they 
attempted  to  vindicate  themselves.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances, the  prosecutor,  according  to  the  etiquette 
of  the  Bar,  is  expected  to  content  himself  with  a 
dry  statement  of  facts,  and  to  refrain  from  making 
any  approach  to  oratory.  But  the  barrister  then  and 
there  employed  was  a  very  young  man,  and  in- 
dulged himself  in  a  certain  amount  of  rhetoric,  de- 
nouncing the  culprits  with  more  emphasis  than 


THE  CHAIRMAN'S  ELOQUENCE  243 

usual  in  such  cases.  His  example  appears  to  have 
stirred  up  the  chairman  to  overtrump  him,  and  in 
delivering  judgment,  he  soared  up  into  unexpected 
magniloquence.  *  Think/  he  said,  '  how  narrowly 
you  have  escaped  the  gallows!  You  kept  dipping 
your  victim  and  pushing  him  continually  under 
water !  One  other  dip  might  have  dipped  him  into 
the  womb  of  Eternity ;  one  more  push  might  have 
pushed  him  into  the  presence  of  his  Maker ! '  Fine 
sentences  like  these  were  rare  at  Quarter  Sessions, 
and  we  valued  them  accordingly.  The  Rev.  Mr. 
Alderson,  cousin  to  the  famous  Baron,  generally  pre- 
sided at  Sheffield,  and  for  practical  purposes  was  a 
good  chairman,  but  his  reasonings  were  not  always 
so  logical  and  consecutive  as  those  of  his  eminent 
kinsman.  The  legend  of  the  ducks  is  so  well  known 
that  I  hardly  dare  repeat  it.  '  John,  John/  he  cried 
out,  addressing  a  criminal  in  whose  family  he  took 
an  interest,  '  this  is  sad  indeed  ;  God  Almighty  has 
given  you  health  and  strength,  instead  of  which  you 
go  about  stealing  ducks.'  This  brilliant  irpbs  TO 
a-rjuaivoiJievov,  as  the  commentators  on  Thucydides 
call  such  a  figure  of  speech,  may  amuse  any  of  my 
readers  to  whom  it  is  new,  whilst  as  to  those  familiar 
with  it,  I  have  not  detained  them  long. 

At  another  time,  whilst  the  Pontefract  Sessions 
were  going  on,  Lord  Houghton's  father,  the  well- 
known  Robert  Milnes,  entertained  a  number  of  us  at 
Fryston.  Besides  the  barristers,  Carlyle  was  amongst 
his  guests.  Roebuck  came  as  one  of  the  Bar  contingent, 


244  CARLYLE  AT  FRYSTON 

and  between  him  and  Carlyle  it  was  not  always  easy 
to  keep  the  peace.  Indeed  I  understand  that  Lord 
Houghton,  since  then,  acquired  a  letter  from  Carlyle 
to  his  wife,  entering  into  details  about  the  party.  In 
this  letter,  to  say  nothing  of  his  bitterness  against 
Roebuck,  few,  if  any  of  us,  are  spoken  of  in  a  manner 
tending  to  promote  self-complacency.  As  far  as  I 
was  concerned,  whether  he  wrote  about  me  harshly 
or  gently  I  know  not,  but  as  far  as  appearances  went, 
I  got  on  well  enough  with  the  Chelsea  sage.  He 
took  an  interest  in  the  English  law  proceedings,  as 
being  comparatively  unknown  to  him,  and  praised 
Lord  Wharnclrffe  highly,  not  so  much  as  an  ex- 
cellent chairman,  which  he  undoubtedly  was,  but 
rather  because  he,  a  man  of  rank  and  wealth,  gave 
up  his  time  to  public  business  without  payment  or 
reward,  thereby  chiming  in  with  Carlyle's  notion 
of  a  natural  aristocrat,  or  born  king  of  men.  But  if 
he  sympathised  with  Lord  Wharncliffe  much,  still 
more  was  he  drawn  on  to  sympathise  with  an  old 
scoundrel  found  guilty  of  some  theft  or  other. 
There  were  at  least  twenty  convictions  recorded 
against  this  gentleman,  and  when  these  were  read  over 
in  succession  he  acknowledged,  as  one  who  saw  the 
game  was  up,  their  truth  with  sublime  indifference. 
Moreover,  at  the  end,  when  the  magistrates  asked 
him  whether  he  had  anything  to  urge  why  judg- 
ment should  not  be  passed  against  him,  he  answered 
thus  :  '  No,  gentlemen,  no  ;  least  said  is  soonest 
mended.'  These  words  went  straight  to  the  heart 


DAVID  DUNDAS-  JAMES   WORTLEY  245 

of  the  great  Silence-monger,  and  all  the  way  home 
he  kept  muttering  to  himself,  '  Least  said  is  soonest 
mended  ;  least  said  is  soonest  mended  ;  poor  fellow, 
poor  fellow!'  I  felt  convinced,  at  the  time,  that  if 
the  result  had  been  left  in  Carlyle's  hands,  instead  of 
despatching  this  veteran  pilferer  to  York  Castle,  he 
would  have  given  him  a  pension  for  life. 

The  man  on  circuit  whom  I  looked  up  to  and 
admired  the  most  was  David  Dundas,  afterwards 
Solicitor- General  for  a  short  time.  His  character 
was  a  fine  one,  and  he  possessed  brilliant  abilities. 
Though  not  perhaps  of  the  exact  temper  out  of  which 
great  lawyers  are  most  naturally  and  easily  formed, 
he  would  nevertheless,  I  believe,  have  reached  the  top 
of  the  tree,  had  he  not  been  upset  by  a  long  and  ex- 
hausting illness  at  the  most  critical  moment  of  his 
career,  an  illness  from  which  he  never  quite  recovered. 
Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  James  "Wortley,  a 
man  beloved  by  all  who  knew  him.  He  was  appa- 
rently sure  of  attaining  the  highest  distinction,  but 
unfortunately  for  himself,  he  happened  to  be  present 
at  a  Yorkshire  election  just  after  he  had  successfully 
got  round  the  Tattenham  corner  of  the  great  Bar 
Derby,  apparently  full  of  running.  Party  feeling 
ran  high  at  the  time,  and  serious  riots  were  appre- 
hended. James  Wortley  and  a  distinguished  Whig 
friend,  the  late  Lord  Halifax,  I  fancy,  walked  down 
arm  in  arm  to  confront  the  excited  populace,  and 
appease  by  their  combined  influence,  as  far  as  they 
could,  the  rising  storm.  The  two  hostile  armies 


246  PELTING  PACIFICATORS 

behaved  with  a  noble  impartiality  ;  the  Liberals 
allowed  their  adversaries  to  pelt  Sir  Charles  Wood 
just  as  much  as  they  pleased,  whilst  they  performed 
the  same  kind  office  for  Jim  Wortley  without  any 
interruption  from  the  Tories.  I  hope  Lord  Halifax, 
then  Sir  Charles  Wood,  escaped  scot  free,  or  as  near 
as  may  be,  but  Jim  Wortley  received  a  very  severe 
blow  on  the  head  from  a  large  stone,  and  the  result 
was  that  when  he  naturally  would  have  exerted  him- 
self to  the  utmost,  in  order  to  fix  himself  in  the  high 
position  he  had  just  reached,  abstinence  from  work 
was  forced  upon  him,  and  he  thus  missed  in  some 
degree  the  great  opportunities  of  his  life.  Both 
David  Dundas  and  Wortley  were  capital  speakers. 
Wortley,  who  was  a  good  musician,  and  who  had  a 
beautiful  tenor  voice,  made  great  use  of  that  instru- 
ment when  it  was  his  cue  to  be  pathetic  and  work 
upon  the  feelings  of  a  jury.  In  one  case  of  child 
murder,  I  remember  an  achievement  of  his  in  oratory 
supposed  to  be  absolutely  without  a  parallel.  He 
actually  made  two  barristers  cry  ; — though  candour 
obliges  me  to  add,  that  one  of  the  two  at  least  was 
suspected  of  a  slight  advance  on  the  road  to  delirium 
tremens.  The  only  person  in  court  quite  unmoved 
by  his  eloquence  was  the  culprit  herself.  If  he  could 
have  drawn  a  few  '  iron  tears '  down  her  cheek,  the 
triumph  would  have  been  complete,  but  she  would 
take  no  hint,  and  remained  to  the  end  of  the  trial,  if 
I  may  adopt  a  conventional  phrase  not  out  of  keeping 
with  Milton's  metaphor,  '  as  hard  as  nails.' 


VISIT  TO  SCOTT'S  TRAINING  STABLES          247 

Besides  his  legal  reputation,  James  Wortley,  owing 
to  his  high  character  and  charming  manners,  pos- 
sessed great  influence  on  circuit,  an  influence  always 
exercised  for  good.  As  a  Yorkshireman,  and  the  son 
of  a  Yorkshireman  who  had  bred  several  fine  horses, 
he  naturally  took  an  interest  in  racing.  I  recollect 
going  with  him  and  one  or  two  other  friends  to  visit 
Scott's  stables  at  Malton.  This  was  in  1842,  during 
the  Lent  Assizes,  the  time  of  year  when,  according  to 
Sydney  Smith's  own  account,  his  grandfather  dis- 
appeared for  ever.  We  saw  the  crack  three-year-old, 
Attila,  together  with  many  others.  John  Scott  was 
perfectly  frank  with  us,  making  no  secret  of  his 
opinion  that  if  the  colt  kept  well,  he  was  perfectly 
certain  to  carry  off  the  Derby.  This  feat  he  accom- 
plished some  two  months  afterwards,  winning  his 
race  in  a  canter.  Not  that  he  was  first  favourite  at 
the  post ;  a  creature  called  Coldrenick,  who  had  never 
started  before,  never  started  again,  and  cut  a  most 
miserable  figure  in  the  contest,  was  believed,  or  at 
any  rate  affirmed,  to  be  a  wonder.  He  was  thought 
so  highly  of  indeed  that  the  odds  against  him  in  the 
face  of  a  large  and  good  field  are  given  in  the  Racing 
Calendar  as  11  to  8.  Unprejudiced  observers  by  no 
means  shared  the  high  opinion  seemingly  entertained 
of  him  by  his  trainer,  and  for  aught  I  know  to  the 
contrary,  he  may  have  ended  his  days  in  a  hansom 
cab.  Attila  would  probably  have  won  the  St.  Leger 
as  well  as  the  Derby,  if  his  heart  had  not  been  broken 
by  a  severe  race  at  Goodwood  over  a  long  distance  of 
17 


248  TOUCHSTONE  AND  VELOCIPEDE 

ground.     In  this  race  he  had  to  carry  8  Ibs.  extra, 
and  though  he  ran  well  and  struggled  gamely  to  the 
end,  this  additional  weight  proved  too  much  for  him. 
Hence,  when   he   came   to   Doncaster,  though  still 
greatly  fancied  by  the  public  at  large,  there  was  a 
rumour  floating  about  among  the  more  experienced 
Yorkshiremen  on  the  ground,  that  something  had 
gone    wrong  with   him.     A    veteran    stud    groom 
declared  in  my  hearing  that  he  was  sure  the  horse 
was  amiss,  because  he  would  keep  jumping  about 
in  a  strange  nervous  manner,  'just  as  if  they  had 
fed  him  on   live   birds.'     He  took  no   part  in   the 
struggle  for  the  St.  Leger,  was  again  beaten  easily 
two  days  afterwards  over  the  Cup  course,  and  then 
retired  from  the  turf.     Nor  did  he  make  any  mark  as 
a  stud  horse.     I  suppose  he  must  either  have  died 
early,  or  else  have  been  sent  abroad.     I  was  very 
much  pleased  with  the  manner  in  which  John  Scott 
conducted   his   establishment ;   he    and   Mrs.    Scott 
paid   great  attention  to  the  health,  happiness,  and 
good  behaviour  of  their  men  and  boys,  and  worked 
hard   to  make  the  best   of  what  pious  folk  would 
probably  consider  a  bad  business.     He  talked  freely 
about  the  merits  of  older  horses  who  had   passed 
through  his  hands,  and  named  three  of  unapproached 
excellence,  Touchstone,  Velocipede,  and  Glaucus.  The 
third  name,  I  confess,  surprised  me.     I  should  have 
thought  Don  John  would  have  taken  precedence  of 
him,  but  John  Scott  told  me  that  no  doubt  Don  John 
was  an  admirable  runner  at  three  years  old,  and  that 


THE  BLOOMSBURY  CASE— DR.  JOHNSON  AND  ATLAS  249 

he  believed,  in  the  autumn  of  1838,  he  could  have 
beaten  any  four-year-old  in  England  at  even  weights, 
but  still  he  '  attained  not  unto  the  first  three.' 
Where  he  would  have  placed  West  Australian,  of 
whom  I  know  he  entertained  a  high  opinion,  I  cannot 
say.  As  for  myself,  measuring  him  through  Kingston, 
Rataplan,  and  other  horses,  against  the  image  of 
Velocipede  galloping  in  1827  and  1828,  which  is  still 
perfectly  fresh  before  my  eyes,  I  do  not  believe  he 
was  Velocipede's  equal. 

'  Whether  James  Wortley  was  engaged  in  the 
famous  Bloomsbury  case  or  not  I  fail  to  remember. 
Bloomsbury  was  the  winner  of  the  Derby  in  1839, 
but  his  enemies  declared  that  his  pedigree  was  not 
properly  given  by  the  owner  when  he  entered  him 
for  the  race.  I  believe  his  enemies  were  technically 
in  the  right ;  but  Baron  Maule,  the  presiding  judge, 
did  not  feel  disposed  to  attach  much  importance  to 
the  technicalities  of  the  Jockey  Club  code.  As  I  am 
discussing  turf  matters,  I  may  as  well  jot  down  an 
anecdote  or  two  here  ;  for  if  I  pass  them  over,  very 
likely,  as  I  have  before  remarked,  I  shall  forget  them 
altogether.  To  begin  at  the  beginning,  nobody  would 
have  suspected  old  Sam  Johnson  to  have  interested 
himself  in  the  four-footed  heroes  of  Newmarket ;  but 
he  did  interest  himself,  odd  as  it  may  seem.  There  is  a 
curious  passage  in  Boswell's  Life,  giving  Boswell's 
account  of  a  visit  they  paid  to  Chatsworth.  After 
having  been  shown  everything  worth  seeing  in  the 
house,  and  introduced  t9  the  famous  horse  Atlas  by 


250  WHAT  JOHNSON  COVETED 

Babralmm — Atlas  having  been  foaled  in  1752  must 
have  been  at  that  time  well  stricken  in  years,  but  he 
was  still  so  beautiful  and  gentle  tempered  that  he  won 
the  doctor's  heart  at  once — Johnson  went  his  way 
muttering  to  himself,  *  Of  all  the  possessions  of  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire,  I  covet  Atlas  the  most.'  I  think 
these  words  ought  to  be  engraved  on  the  portrait  of 
the  horse,  if  there  be  a  portrait,  which  I  cannot  doubt, 
in  the  Duke's  possession.  It  must  be  confessed  that 
Atlas,  as  one  of  the  doctor's  surroundings  in  Fleet 
Street,  would  have  cut  a  singular  figure.  With 
Hodge  the  cat,  he  might,  I  daresay,  have  fraternised 
easily  enough,  since  cats  and  racehorses  are  often 
intimate  friends,  but  I  fear  Mrs.  Williams  would 
have  found  him  a  white  elephant,  and  have  ex- 
pressed her  feelings  on  the  subject  with  the  acerbity 
usual  to  her  when  displeased. 

Atlas,  by  the  way,  is  also  celebrated  by  another 
man  of  letters,  Holcroft,  the  writer  of  comedies, 
novels,  and  also,  I  suppose,  since  he  was  tried  for 
high  treason,  of  revolutionary  pamphlets.  Holcroft, 
a  self-made  man,  had  begun  life  as  a  stable-boy  at 
Newmarket,  and  records  the  opinions  of  the  trainers 
there  that  Atlas  was  the  best  horse  that  had  ever 
been  seen  in  England  since  Flying  Ckilders.1  Hol- 
croft witnessed  Atlas's  triumph  over  the  hitherto 
invincible  Careless  by  Regulus,  and  refers  to  that  im- 
portant event  in  his  memoirs. 

1  This  phrase  was  repeated  several  times — till  Eclipse  put  it  out  of 
court. 


MK.  JOHNSON— CHARLES  GREV1LLE  251 

To  return  to  Dr.  Johnson.  There  was  a  namesake 
of  his,  known  among  sporting  men  as  the  celebrated 
Mr.  Johnson.  The  doctor,  who  before  his  honorary  de- 
gree might  possibly  have  disputed  the  title,  speaks  of 
him  nevertheless  with  great  enthusiasm.  This  John- 
son was  a  wonderful  horseman  ;  he  undertook  among 
his  other  performances  to  ride  a  mile  over  York  race- 
course in  three  minutes,  standing  upright  on  the  top 
of  his  saddle.  He  accomplished  his  feat  in  little 
more  than  two  minutes  and  a  half,  and  the  doctor 
points  him  out  as  the  leading  man  in  his  profession, 
adding  that  all  such  men  deserve  honour,  whatever 
the  profession  may  be,  because  they  must  possess 
certain  remarkable  qualities.  The  horse  under  him 
on  this  occasion  was  not  thought  worth  speaking  of 
by  his  chronicler,  Mr.  Orton.  Still,  as  we  are  assured 
by  our  modern  wiseacres  that  Eclipse  and  Highflyer 
would  be  utterly  contemptible  now  if  pitted  against 
ordinary  platers,  he  ought  to  have  been  a  fair  animal 
for  his  time,  1760. 

On  one  occasion  I  accompanied  Charles  Greville, 
the  memoir  writer,  to  York  from  a  country  house  at 
which  we  were  staying  together.  He  had  entered  a 
mare  called  Adine  for  the  principal  handicap  at  that 
meeting,  and  felt  quite  certain,  with  very  good  reason 
I  believe,  that  she  would  carry  off  the  prize.  Accord- 
ingly, he  drove  over  to  York  in  high  spirits,  kept 
rubbing  his  hands  joyously  together,  and  remarked  : 
*  I  don't  think  I  can  be  beat.  I  shall  stick  it  into 
Davis  for  another  thousand  or  two.'  Davis,  a 


252  THE  LEVIATHAN  BETTOR 

thoroughly  honest  and  straightforward  fellow,  was 
then  generally  known  as  the  Leviathan  bettor.  It 
was  my  unpleasant  office  to  throw  cold  water  on 
these  exulting  anticipations,  and  I  had  to  say  :  '  I 
don't  think  you  will  do  that  this  morning,  Mr. 
Greville,  for  I  met  Davis  in  the  Strand  last  week,  and 
he  told  me  he  never  meant  to  go  to  York  again — 
they  robbed  him  so.'  Mr.  Greville  seemed  to  regard 
this  abandonment  of  professional  duties  on  Davis's 
part  very  much  as  a  general  would  regard  the  refusal 
of  a  colonel  to  advance  upon  the  enemy  because  their 
fire  was  too  hot,  and  he  began  to  curse  and  swear  in 
the  most  emphatic  manner,  ending  his  conversation 
thus  :  '  Not  come  to  York  indeed  ;  what  the  h — 
does  he  mean  by  it  ? '  There  was  but  one  answer 
possible  :  '  Well,  I  suppose  he  means  not  to  have 
those  additional  thousands  stuck  into  him  by  you 
and  other  people.'  Charles  Greville  did  not  look 
pleased,  and  if  he  thought  I  was  worth  his  notice, 
may  have  snarled  at  me  in  some  part  of  those 
memoirs  still  held  back  by  Mr.  Reeve.  At  the  same 
tune,  though  his  temper  was  none  of  the  best,  he  had 
a  sense  of  humour  which  modified  it  a  good  deal  in 
practice,  and  his  manner  of  telling  a  story  against 
himself,  outbursts  of  anger  alternating  with  flashes 
of  fun,  was  often  highly  amusing.  I  recollect  his 
account  of  a  defeat  that  he  sustained  at  the  hands  of 
a  well-known  bird-stuffer  and  entomologistj  which 
always  produced  a  great  effect.  Charles  Greville  was 
the  owner  of  an  Impeyan  pheasant  in  a  glass  case,  at 


AN  IMPEYAN  PHEASANT  253 

a  time  when  Impeyan  pheasants  were  rarer  than  they 
are  at  present.  Being  dissatisfied  with  the  style  in 
which  it  was  got  up,  Charles  Greville  sent  his  bird  to 
the  person  referred  to  in  order  that  it  might  be 
re-arranged.  Now  this  gentleman  apparently  liked 
to  exhibit  the  handsome  bird  in  his  window.  Week 
after  week,  and  month  after  month,  he  refrained  from 
returning  it,  till  Charles  Greville  grew  furious,  and 
tore  it  angrily  away.  Back  it  came  at  last,  bringing 
with  it  a  long  bill  (I  do  not  mean  as  one  of  its  bodily 
characteristics) .  This  bill  Greville  disputed  fiercely,  on 
the  ground  that  his  Impeyan  pheasant  had  never  been 
touched,  and  was  restored  to  him  exactly  as  it  went. 
A  violent  wrangle  ensued,  and  the  ornithologist 
summoned  him  into  the  County  Court.  War  seemed 
inevitable,  and  Greville,  who  was  always  lamenting 
that  a  man  so  evidently  intended  by  nature  for  a 
great  statesman  should  have  dwindled  down  into  a 
mere  member  of  the  Jockey  Club,  rather  chuckled 
over  the  notion  of  meeting  his  fraudulent  enemy  face 
to  face,  and  crushing  him  under  the  weight  of  his 
eloquence.  But  the  bird-stuff er  knew  what  he  was 
about,  and  after  waiting  till  it  was  too  late  to  employ 
counsel,  so  that  Greville  had  to  appear  in  person  or 
not  at  all,  got  the  trial  fixed  for  the  day  of  the  Derby, 
and  Charles  Greville,  finding  it  impossible  to  put  his 
Epsom  business  on  one  side,  had  to  haul  down  his 
flag,  and  his  adversary,  we  may  fairly  say,  walked 
over  for  the  stakes  at  issue  between  them.  Nothing 
could  be  funnier  than  the  way  in  which  he  invariably 


254  DAVID  DUNDAS 

told  the  tale,  foaming  at  the  mouth  with  rage  over 
his  grievance,  yet  ever  and  anon,  under  the  softening 
influence  of  humour,  relaxing  in  his  wrath,  and  echo- 
ing the  laugh  which  the  story  of  his  defeat  always 
awakened  in  everyone  else. 

But  to  return  to  the  circuit.  David  Dundas,  James 
Wortley,  and  Murphy,  the  Irishman  of  whom  I  have 
spoken  already  in  connection  with  Sam  Warren,  were, 
I  should  say,  the  most  popular  men  on  it.  David 
Dundas,  though  not  absolutely  the  wittiest,  or  abso- 
lutely the  cleverest  man  of  his  day,  was  yet,  I  think, 
the  most  agreeable  talker  and  the  most  charming 
companion  to  be  met  with  anywhere.  Besides  being 
a  thorough  gentleman,  he  was  a  warm  friend,  affec- 
tionate and  steadfast,  as  Scotchmen  often  are.  When  I 
say  that  to  "these  moral  gifts  were  added  humour,  a 
playful  imagination,  a  tenacious  memory,  and  a  fine 
taste  in  literature,  I  think  my  readers  will  agree  with 
me  that  the  effect  he  produced  on  all  who  knew  him 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  I  could  tell  any  number 
of  stories  in  connection  with  him,  but  as  they  do  not 
carry  along  with  them  his  presence,  voice,  and  manner 
of  telling  them,  it  is  perhaps  better  to  confine  myself 
to  one  or  two  of  the  more  striking  ones.  He  was 
once  playing  at  whist  with  a  lawyer  called  Jacob,  a 
man  of  the  highest  reputation  in  his  time,  but  the 
cards  went  against  Dundas  with  special  ill-luck  ; 
upon  this  he  laid  them  down  with  an  air  of  sorrowful 
resignation,  and  pathetically  exclaimed,  '  The  voice  is 
Jacob's  voice,  but  the  hands  are  the  hands  of  See-saw.' 


THE  KEIR  BAILIFF  OF  1745  255 

His  nearest  neighbour  in  Scotland  was  the  celebrated 
Stirling  Maxwell  of  Keir.  Once,  after  dinner,  they 
agreed  that  each  of  them  should  improvise  an  epitaph 
on  the  other.  What  the  epitaph  on  Dundas  may  have 
been  I  know  not ;  that  for  Stirling  Maxwell  took  this 
form — 

Here  lies  Stirling  of  Keir, 

A  very  good  man,  but  a  queer ; 

In  short  if  you  want  to  find  a  queerer, 

You  must  dig  up  a  Stirlinger  of  Keirer. 

The  story  of  the  old  bailiff  on  this  Keir  estate 
which  I  got  from  David,  is,  I  think,  well  worth  re- 
cording, for  Englishmen  at  any  rate,  to  most  of  whom 
it  will  be  new.  Stirling's  ancestor,  out  in  '15,  had 
been  invisible,  on  the  Continent  or  elsewhere,  during 
the  next  thirty  years,  but  in  '45  he  reappeared  on 
the  scene.  I  suppose  there  was  no  evidence  of  his 
having  entangled  himself  in  the  actual  rebellion  of 
that  year,  as  the  Government  relied  upon  a  former 
conviction,  obtained  by  them  during  his  absence,  to 
bring  him  to  the  scaffold.  The  first  step  of  course 
was  to  identify  the  suspected  prisoner  with  Stirling 
of  Keir.  This  his  ex-bailiff  undertook  to  do  so  readily 
and  frankly,  that  the  counsel  for  the  prosecution  did 
not  trouble  themselves  to  procure  other  witnesses, 
probably  after  the  lapse  of  thirty  years  difficult  to 
find.  But  when  the  trial  came  on,  the  bailiff  gazed 
steadily  at  the  man  in  the  dock,  and  then  explained 
to  the  judge  that  he  was  verra  like  his  maister,  but 
that,  on  looking  on  him  weel,  he  dooted,  indeed  he 


256  THE  BURNS  CENTENARY  DINNER 

felt  sure,  that  he  was  na  his  maister  at  all.  The 
prosecution  went  down  like  a  house  of  cards,  and  the 
Hanoverians  were  baffled.  The  Presbyterian  minis- 
ter of  the  place  naturally  became  furious,  and  vented 
his  indignation  upon  the  culprit  in  the  strongest 
terms.  '  Where/  cried  he,  '  you  perjured  villain, 
do  you  expect  to  go  to  after  death — lying  to  God  as 
you  have  lied  to-day  ? '  '  Weel,  weel,  meenister,' 
was  the  reply,  c  what  you  say  may  be  a'  verra  true, 
but  you  see  I'd  rather  trust  my  saul  with  my  Maker, 
than  my  maister  with  thae  fellows.'  Transcendent 
morality,  no  doubt,  but  still,  I  think,  morality  of  the 
right  sort.  David  Dundas  attended  the  Burns  Cen- 
tenary dinner,  but  happened  to  be  oppressed  by  a  cold 
at  the  tune.  Before  the  end  of  the  banquet,  his  neigh- 
bour, a  well-known  Scotch  bookseller  called  Burnet, 
turned  sharply  round  upon  him  and  remarked, 
'  Weel,  Mr.  Dundas,  I  have  always  heard  that  ye 
were  vary  gude  company,  but  I  canna  say  ye  have 
added  much  to  the  heelarity  of  the  evening.'  David 
humbled  himself  duly,  and  pleaded  illness,  but  his 
inexorable  critic  retorted  at  once,  '  Weel,  Mr.  Dundas, 
I  am  sorry  to  hear  ye  are  sae  indisposed,  but  that 
canna  affect  the  truth  of  my  observation  that  ye 
have  na  added  much  to  the  heelarity  of  the  evening.' 
David  made  his  peace,  I  believe,  with  his  persecutor 
shortly  afterwards,  by  claiming  to  be  a  Scotch  cousin, 
through  old  Bishop  Burnet,  whom  the  Scotch  pub- 
lisher naturally  held  in  great  veneration. 

Murphy  must  have  left  so  many  good  things  be- 


MURPHY  IN  RE  CHARLES  BULLER  257 

hind  him  at  the  Reform  Club,  where  he  was  out  of 
my  reach,  that  I  shall  content  myself  with  mention- 
ing one  repartee  of  his,  which,  if  not  the  best  joke, 
was  about  the  quickest  flash  of  utterance  that  ever 
darted  across  a  dinner-table.  Roebuck  was  talking 
rather  pompously  about  Charles  Buller,  to  the  effect 
that  it  was  strange  he  should  be  so  awkward,  un- 
gainly, and  ill-looking  a  person,  seeing  that  his  mother 
had  been  so  wonderfully  lovely  as  never  to  be  called 
in  India  anything  but  the  Queen  of  the  Ganges. 
Before  the  word  Ganges  had  quite  left  his  lips,  Murphy, 
with  his  mouth  full,  retorted  like  a  rocket :  '  Well, 
you  know,  that  is  just  the  reason  why  he  runs  into 
the  Hugly'  (Hooghly).  Whether,  beside  this  ad- 
mirable piece  of  logic,  Talleyrand's  gibe  against  Bobus 
Smith  under  similar  circumstances,  '  C'etait  done 
monsieur  votre  pere  qui  n'e*tait  pas  si  bien,'  was 
also  applicable  to  the  Buller  family,  need  not  be 
inquired  into.  The  Charles  Buller  thus  commented 
upon  I  unluckily  never  met,  though  I  once  met  his 
coat,  which  had  been  carried  off  by  mistake  from  a 
country  house  by  another  man,  who  had  to  appear 
in  it  at  dinner  till  the  matter  was  set  right.  As 
Charles  Buller,  besides  possessing  many  other  in- 
tellectual gifts,  was  a  very  sparkling  talker,  his  coat, 
I  should  say,  must  have  found  its  inmate  at  that  par- 
ticular dinner  party  unusually  dull. 

When  in  company  with  Carlyle,  his  old  tutor,  the 
Chelsea  prophet  began  abusing  Lord  Falkland,  as 
might  have  been  expected,  and  ended  his  invective 


258  LORD  FALKLAND'S  CLEAN  SHIRT 

thus  :  *  Puir  meeserable  creature,  what  did  he  ever 
do  to  be  remembered  among  men  ?  '  '  Well,'  re- 
plied his  former  pupil,  '  at  least  he  put  on  a  clean 
shirt  to  be  shot  in,  which  is  more  than  ever  you 
would  have  done,  Carlyle.' 

I  have  said  above  that  David  Dundas  was  not 
the  cleverest  man  whom  I  ever  knew ;  that  distinc- 
tion I  think  I  should  award  to  Baron  Alderson.  Of 
course,  under  the  term  cleverness  I  am  not  including 
high  original  genius  or  profound  thinking  powers, 
but,  using  the  word  in  its  more  special  sense,  I  should 
say  that  Alderson's  clearness  of  head,  quickness  of 
apprehension,  and  logical  acuteness  could  scarcely 
be  equalled,  and,  what  is  more  to  my  purpose,  there 
were  few  of  his  class  who  could  touch  him  as  a  wit. 
I  shall  content  myself,  however,  with  recording  one 
of  his  good  things,  and  one  only,  first  because  I 
heard  it  myself,  and  secondly  because,  unless  I  take 
care,  serious-minded  critics,  especially  if  they  happen 
to  be  of  the  Kadical  persuasion,  will  take  the  oppor- 
tunity of  holding  me  up  to  general  contempt  as  a 
Jack  Pudding  and  a  second-rate  Joe  Miller.  Alex- 
ander, though  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  circuit,  was 
apt  to  waste  time,  and  to  be  dull  in  court.  Through- 
out the  morning,  he  had  somewhat  irritated  the 
Baron,  a  man  not  very  tolerant  of  prosing,  by  his 
prolixity  and  tediousness.  At  last  a  witness  came 
into  the  box  called  by  his  adversary  to  prove  some- 
thing or  other.  Alexander,  who  had  learned  that 
this  witness,  like  many  other  '  capable  citizens '  in 


BAEON  ALDERSON'S  VIEW  OF  A  FUTURE  STATE  259 

the  West  Riding,  professed  himself  an  atheist,  rose 
up  to  stop  his  evidence  with  an  air  of  solemn  self- 
sufficiency  which  did  not  awaken  much  interest  either 
in  the  judge  or  in  his  fellow-barristers.  '  Stop,  sir, 
stop,'  he  cried  out  ;  '  before  I  allow  my  learned 
friend  to  begin  his  examination,  I  have  a  most  vital 
question  to  put  to  you  myself.  Do  you  believe  in  a 
future  state  ? '  The  man  hesitated,  and  Alderson, 
bending  over  from  the  Bench,  inquired  in  a  tone  of 
appealing  pathos,  '  Mr.  Alexander,  Mr.  Alexander, 
are  you  asking  the  witness  his  opinion  as  to  whether 
we  shall  ever  get  on  to  the  next  case  ? '  I  must 
conclude  the  story  by  admitting  that  in  the  end 
pomposity  carried  the  day  against  wit.  Alexander 
brought  his  theological  batteries  to  bear  upon  the 
joke,  and  Alderson,  in  reality  a  very  pious  man,  had 
to  eat  humble  pie  ;  a  thing  he  seldom  did,  and  never 
liked  doing. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

Trials  of  interest  on  the  Northern  Circuit — Murder  of  Lord  Wenlock's 
keeper — Quarrel  between  two  brothers  at  Newcastle — Tom  Hodg- 
son's bewilderment — Shakspeare  at  Liverpool — '  Much  Ado  about 
Nothing.' 

OF  the  many  interesting  trials  witnessed  by  me  on 
circuit,  the  greater  number  have  faded  away  out 
of  my  mind,  but  some  still  remain.  At  Newcastle 
(I  begin  with  this  as  a  lighter  memory,  for  some  of 
my  recollections  are  profoundly  tragical),  a  South- 
country  judge,  I  think  Taunton,  was  going  his  round 
through  our  Northern  towns,  profoundly  ignorant  of 
the  local  dialects.  In  Newcastle,  the  narrow  street 
called  by  Scotchmen  a  wynd  has  received  the  name 
of  a  chare.  Whilst  a  trial  for  murder  was  going  on, 
one  witness,  rejoicing  in  a  well-developed  Northum- 
brian burr,  had  to  detail  what  he  knew.  '  Go  on, 
witness.'  '  Yes,  my  lawd;  then  I  saw  thwee  men 
come  out  of  a  chare  foot.'  Taunton  looked  upon 
this  simple  fact  as  an  impossibility,  at  least  anywhere 
out  of  the  '  Arabian  Nights,'  and  got  very  angry. 

*  Mind  what  you  are  about,  witness,  and  don't  talk 
nonsense  of  that  kind;  go  on  now,  and  be  careful.' 

*  Yes,  my  lawd;  yes,  my  lawd ;  then  I  saw  thwee 
men  come  out  of  a  chare  foot.'     '  Witness,  you  must 


MURDER  OF  LORD  WENLOCK'S  KEEPER        261 

be  drunk  ;  if  you  don't  conduct  yourself  properly,  I 
shall  refuse  you  your  expenses.'  '  Yes,  my  lawd ; 
yes,  my  lawd  ;  then  I  saw  thwee  men  come  out  of  a 
chare  foot.'  At  this  point  a  local  barrister  rose  to 
explain,  but  only  added  to  the  confusion.  '  Sit  down, 
Mr.  Fenwick,  sit  down  at  once  ;  I  will  not  be  inter- 
rupted.' Of  course,  in  process  of  time,  the  judge  was 
made  to  listen,  recovered  his  temper,  and  got  a  lesson, 
let  us  hope,  in  provincial  English. 

One  of  the  earliest  crimes  that  excited  the  most 
vehement  indignation  in  my  mind  was  the  murder 
of  Lord  Wenlock's  keeper,  a  man  called  Robinson. 
Robinson  was  a  very  fine  fellow,  powerful,  courageous, 
kind-hearted,  and  of  admirable  fidelity  to  his  employer. 
His  character  and  conduct  caused  him  to  be  looked 
upon  by  a  gang  of  poachers  about  the  place  as  their 
bitter  enemy,  an  enemy  to  be  removed  at  all  hazards. 
They  therefore  laid  a  plan  to  kill  him,  and  unhappily 
it  succeeded.  As  far  as  I  recollect,  the  deed  was 
done  before  the  shooting  season  had  commenced, 
and  must  be  regarded  as  the  result  of  a  deliberate 
calculation ;  no  accident,  therefore,  even  in  the 
slightest  degree,  but  a  thoroughly  cold-blooded  mur- 
der. Robinson  was  about  to  be  married,  and,  accord- 
ing to  a  practice  habitual  in  that  part  of  the 
country,  was  sitting  up  alone  during  the  dark  hours 
with  his  betrothed  wife.  The  poachers  in  question 
knew  where  to  find  him,  and  coming  close  to  the 
cottage  of  his  intended  father-in-law,  fired  several 
shots  to  entice  him  forth.  Out  he  rushed  to  perform 


262  FAILURE  TO  CONVICT 

his  duty,  at  whatever  risk  to  himself,  and  as  he 
rushed  out,  the  ruffians  pretended  to  run  away.  He 
followed  them  as  fast  as  he  could,  throwing  off,  in 
the  eagerness  of  the  pursuit,  his  coat  here,  and  his 
neckcloth  there.  But  the  most  touching  incident  of 
this  jiart  of  the  story  was,  that  he  disarmed  himself 
by  placing  his  gun  against  a  tree.  This,  we  were  told, 
was  the  course  he  invariably  took  under  similar 
circumstances;  he  trusted  to  his  natural  strength  and 
courage  in  all  such  encounters,  and  preferred  facing 
an  extra  danger  to  carrying  a  weapon,  lest  he  might 
be  tempted  to  shed  the  blood  of  a  fellow-villager, 
known  to  him  perhaps  from  boyhood.  Against  the 
ruffians  who  sought  his  life,  this  chivalrous  temper 
availed  him  nothing;  they  had  arranged  how  to  kill 
him,  and  accomplished  their  purpose  without  hesita- 
tion or  remorse.  After  letting  him  see  clearly  the 
way  they  went,  they  passed  through  a  high  hedge, 
and  lay  down  in  the  ditch  on  the  other  side  ;  the 
moment  he  arrived  at  this  point,  they  rose  up 
suddenly,  knocked  him  down,  and  cut  his  throat  from 
ear  to  ear.  There  was  no  moral  doubt  as  to  the  two 
men  who  had  committed  the  crime,  and  the  evidence 
brought  it  home  to  them  with  perfect  distinctness, 
but  unfortunately  the  point,  on  which  the  prosecuting 
counsel  insisted  the  most  in  his  opening  speech,  was 
the  only  one  which  absolutely  broke  down.  It  is 
possible  that  the  minds  of  the  jury  were  bewildered 
by  the  unexpected  introduction  of  this  confusing 
element  into  the  case,  I  am  sorry  to  say  it  is  also 


JURYMEN  AND  POACHERS         263 

possible  that  in  a  poaching  murder  the  jury  were  glad 
to  discover,  or  to  invent,  a  loophole  through  which 
they  might  escape  without  finding  the  prisoners 
guilty ;  at  any  rate  they  acquitted  them  at  once,  to 
the  great  disgust  of  the  judge  and  the  barristers 
present.  We  thought,  reasonably  enough,  that 
admitting  sympathy  with  poachers  to  be  not  un- 
natural in  the  class  from  which  common  jurymen 
are  taken,  that  sympathy  should  be  confined  to  cases 
where  a  keeper  is  killed  in  a  fair  stand-up  fight,  but 
that  when  fellows  pretend  to  be  after  game,  their 
real  object  being  to  ensnare,  and  then  ruthlessly 
assassinate  an  honest  man,  the  jury  who  sympathise 
with  them  must  be  composed  of  scoundrels  or 
fools.  However,  a  verdict  is  a  verdict,  and  Messrs. 
Morley  and  Bell  went  their  way  rejoicing.  Bell  died 
shortly  afterwards,  and  it  is  from  his  deathbed  con- 
fession that  the  details  of  the  crime  were  learned. 
The  consequences  of  this  acquittal  were  not  pleasant 
to  gamekeepers  or  to  squires. 

Morley  and  Bell  found  imitators  in  different  parts 
of  the  county.  Notably,  on  my  uncle's  estate,  a  farmer 
of  the  name  of  Ridsdale  did  his  best  to  put  one  of  the 
game  watchers  out  of  the  way,  without  the  smallest 
provocation.  Cartwright — that  was  the  watcher's 
name — was  a  humourist  and  an  athlete.  Luckily  for 
himself,  he  possessed  an  iron  constitution,  or  he  never 
would  have  survived  the  wounds  inflicted  upon  him. 
Some  months  before,  I  recollect  his  creating  a  laugh 
throughout  two  elevens  in  a  Hall  match  ;  he  had 
18 


264  CARTWRIGHT  AND  RIDSDALE 

intended  making  a  very  long  score,  but  was  bowled 
out  by  a  leg  shooter,  after  a  short  and  unsuccessful 
innings  ;  however,  he  shouldered  his  bat  with  a  grin, 
and  quietly  remarking,  *  the  best  of  a'  maun  dee,' 
sauntered  back  into  the  tent.  Poor  fellow,  he  did 
not  foresee  how  nearly  he  was  about  to  realise  this 
indisputable  fact  a  few  months  afterwards,  possibly 
through  the  kind  assistance  of  one  of  the  lookers-on. 
However  that  might  be,  one  January  afternoon,  about 
half-past  three  o'clock,  he  was  leaning  over  a  five- 
barred  gate,  when  shots  were  fired  close  to  him,  and 
Mr.  Ridsdale  appeared,  fowling-piece  in  hand,  carrying 
a  hare.  He  was  met  with,  l  Hullo,  Joe,  what  are  you 
about  ?  You  should  not  be  doing  that,  you  know.' 
1  Oh,  shouldn't  I? '  was  the  farmer's  rejoinder  ;  '  if  my 
gun  were  only  loaded,  you  would  have  something 
to  learn  about  that.'  '  Stuff  and  nonsense,'  retorted 
Cartwright,  '  you  are  not  such  a  fool  as  that.'  In 
the  meantime  Ridsdale  quietly  reloaded  his  gun,  and 
as  soon  as  he  had  done  so  discharged  both  barrels, 
not  being  above  three  or  four  yards  off,  into  Cart- 
wright's  chest.  He  dropped  as  a  dead  man  drops,  and 
Ridsdale,  thinking  the  job  done,  went  his  way.  But 
the  assassin  had  not  made  sufficient  allowance  for  the 
intervening  bar  of  the  gate,  and  his  victim,  though 
desperately  wounded,  was  only  hit  in  the  throat. 
His  jugular  vein  and  windpipe  were  pierced  through, 
but  the  heart  and  lungs  had  escaped.  Cartwright,  on 
being  found  and  brought  back  to  consciousness, 
though  he  could  not  utter  a  word,  was  able  to  write 


ATTEMPTED  MUKDER  NEAR  LIVERPOOL         265 

his  assailant's  name  on  a  piece  of  paper,  and  the 
farmer  was  at  once  arrested.  He  richly  deserved 
hanging,  and  might  in  those  days  have  been  hanged 
according  to  law,  but  on  what  always  has  appeared  to 
me  the  illogical  ground  that  a  criminal,  because  he  is 
mistaken  in  supposing  himself  to  have  killed  his  man, 
deserves  mercy,  he  got  off  with  penal  servitude  for  life. 
The  most  odious  assassin  whom  I  ever  saw  tried 
made  his  escape  from  the  gallows  through  a  similar 
loophole.  His  offence  was  this.  A  farmer  about  to 
emigrate  took  with  him,  as  people  believed,  a 
considerable  sum  of  money  in  hard  cash.  In  the 
natural  course  of  things  he  went  to  lodge  at  a  marine 
boarding-house  near  Liverpool.  The  villain  came  there 
after  him,  made  friends  with  his  intended  victim,  and 
after  worming  himself  into  the  man's  confidence, 
lived  with  him  in  the  closest  intimacy  for  two  or 
three  weeks.  After  this,  he  pretended  to  disclose  the 
precautions  he  had  himself  taken  to  be  secure  against 
robbery,  and  finally  elicited  from  his  unsuspecting 
comrade  all  that  he  wanted  to  know.  He  then 
enticed  him  to  take  a  long  walk  into  the  fields,  that 
they  might  take  leave  of  their  common  country 
together,  drew  him  onwards  to  a  lonely  spot,  fell 
upon  him  and  murdered  him.  I  say  murdered  him, 
because  he  did  not  stay  his  hands  at  the  last  through 
any  promptings  of  pity,  but  simply  because  in  his 
belief  the  business  was  finished  and  the  man  dead. 
When  found,  however,  the  breath  was  in  his  body 
still,  and  by  a  sort  of  miracle  he  recovered  sufficiently 


266  MURDER  BY  A  FARMER 

to  give  evidence  against  his  false  friend.  But  Baron 
Alderson  was  the  judge,  and  his  nerves  always  failed 
him  when  he  had  to  pronounce  a  capital  sentence ;  the 
farmer  had  escaped  with  life,  and  this  gave  him  an 
opportunity,  of  which  he  availed  himself,  to  evade  a 
painful  duty,  so  that  this  ruffian  also  was  only 
transported  for  life,  instead  of  being  hanged  as  he 
ought  to  have  been.  Another  atrocious  murder  was 
committed  on  Lord  Wenlock's  Yorkshire  estate.  A 
profligate  tenant  of  his  killed  his  wife.  He  made 
some  pretence  of  farm  business  at  Malton,  knowing 
that  if  he  returned  secretly  in  the  afternoon,  all  the 
inmates  of  the  house  except  her,  would  be  at  work  in 
a  neighbouring  hay-field.  Under  these  circumstances, 
she,  being  alone,  might  be  supposed  to  have  met  her 
death  at  the  hands  of  some  wandering  tramp.  Other 
evidence,  I  daresay,  cropped  up  against  him,  but  the 
one  thing  that  caught  and  settled  him  was  the  silence  of 
the  yard  dog.  Any  stranger  entering  the  farm  would 
no  doubt  have  been  furiously  barked  at,  but  the  hay- 
makers close  at  hand  never  heard  a  sound.  The 
inference  was  then  irresistible  that  no  stranger  had 
been  there  ;  and  this  fact,  taken  in  conjunction  with 
his  vile  character,  removed  all  doubts ;  he  at  any 
rate  was  very  properly  hanged. 

But  amongst  these  cases  the  one  which  interested 
me  most  was  tried  at  Newcastle.  "We  may  all,  I  think, 
take  warning  by  it,  as  it  shows  how  men  may  pass 
through  a  long  life,  held  in  general  esteem,  and  yet 
with  evil  passions,  probably  unknown  even  to  them- 


BITTEK  FAMILY  QUARREL  267 

selves,  lying  hid  under  the  smooth  surface  of  an  ordi- 
nary career ;  passions  which  wait  only  for  some 
sufficient  temptation  to  rise  up  suddenly,  and  sweep 
away  all  sense  of  right  and  wrong.  There  were  two 
brothers  engaged  in  a  bookselling  and  publishing  busi- 
ness at  Alnwick.  The  elder  of  the  two  was  seventy- 
three,  the  younger  sixty- nine  years  of  age  ;  they  both 
of  them  were  popular  among  their  fellow-townsmen, 
they  both  of  them  had  been  respected  as  honest  trades- 
men and  capable  men  of  business  for  many  years,  and 
it  might  well  have  been  thought,  the  journey  not  being 
a  long  one,  that  they  would  have  gone  down  to  the 
grave  in  peace  and  credit.  But  by  some  evil  chance 
money  disputes  arose  between  them.  After  a  long  dis- 
cussion the  partnership  was  dissolved,  and  in  one 
moment  a  deadly  hatred  rose  up  in  the  mind  of  the 
elder  brother  against  his  junior.  This  hatred  he  re- 
solved to  gratify  at  all  hazards.  Accordingly  he  sought 
out  an  Irish  harvester  who  had  landed  in  England  to 
cut  something,  whether  corn  or  throats  he  did  not  seem 
to  care  much,  as  he  readily  agreed,  in  return  for  a  cer- 
tain sum  down,  to  help  this  bookseller  in  committing 
the  murder  he  had  at  heart.  They  arranged  their  plan 
as  follows.  The  central  shop  was  fixed,  as  I  have  said, 
at  Alnwick,  but  there  were  branch  establishments 
connected  with  it,  at  Morpeth,  Rothbury,  and  other 
small  Northumbrian  towns.  At  certain  intervals 
the  proprietor  went  a  kind  of  circuit  through  these 
dependencies,  and  brought  back  the  gains  of  the  month 
or  quarter,  whichever  it  might  be,  to  his  home.  The 


268  IRISH  HARVESTER  HIRED 

two  conspirators  watched  their  opportunity,  and  way- 
laid their  intended  victim  shortly  after  he  had  left 
the  Rothbury  inn.  It  was  a  fine  summer  evening  hi 
July,  and  they  did  not  dare  to  complete  the  operation 
until  night  had  fallen.  They  therefore  dragged  their 
man  off  into  the  middle  of  Rothbury  moor  j  when 
there,  they  handcuffed  and  placed  him  between  them. 
After  this,  they  robbed  him,  and  out  of  the  proceeds 
of  the  robbery,  the  Irishman  was  paid  beforehand 
for  the  assistance  he  had  kindly  undertaken  to  give. 
But  summer  days  are  long  in  the  North,  so  they  kept 
walking  up  and  down,  just  like  three  friends  on  an 
evening  stroll  together  ;  they  took  care,  of  course,  to 
give  a  wide  berth  to  any  other  wanderers  who  might 
also  be  enjoying  the  fine  July  weather. 

During  this  enforced  delay,  the  elder  brother  abused 
his  captive  and  struck  him  repeatedly,  but  the  Irish- 
man, though  ready  to  earn  his  wages  when  the  moment 
came,  maintained  a  stoical  impartiality,  seeing  no 
reason  why  he  should  interfere  in  the  matter  till  then. 
Darkness  arrived  at  last,  and  the  principal  gave  his 
order  to  his  subordinate.  '  You  keep  watch  over  him 
here ;  I  will  go  over  to  my  friend  Farmer  Thompson, 
who  lives  close  at  hand,  and  borrow  from  him  a  cart 
and  a  sheet.  We  will  put  the  body  into  this  cart, 
drive  over  the  hills  to  a  tarn  I  know  of,  and  thnow 
it,  properly  weighted,  into  the  water.  We  may  then 
separate,  and  nothing  more  will  ever  be  heard  of  the 
matter.'  Having  thus  left  the  Irishman  on  guard, 
he  went  his  way  to  Mr.  Thompson's  farm.  He  had  not 


A  BODY'S  ADVICE  269 

calculated,  however,  upon  the  mobility  of  the  Celtic 
temperament.  The  sentinel  got  bored  in  the  silence 
and  gloom,  and  to  fill  up  the  time,  condescended  to 
enter  into  conversation  with  '  the  body.'  He  observed, 
with  much  justice  and  good  sense,  that  such  family 
quarrels  were  very  unfortunate  and  annoying.  '  The 
body,'  as  might  have  been  expected,  took  the  same 
view  of  the  case,  and  encouraged  by  the  affability 
of  its  assassin,  went  on  thus  :  '  Now  just  listen 
to  me  whilst  I  tell  you  what  I  would  do  in  your 
place.  You  are  paid,  and  will  get  no  more  by 
killing  me  than  you  have  got  already,  why  don't 
you  make  your  way  northwards  over  the  moor  at 
once?  You  will  reach  Alnwick  just  in  time  to  catch 
the  mail  passing  south,  you  will  take  your  seat  on 
the  top  of  it  with  your  money  safe  in  your  pocket, 
be  off  the  Lord  knows  where,  and  nobody  in  these 
parts  will  ever  set  eyes  on  you  again.'  The  agri- 
cultural labourer  pondered  for  a  moment,  and  then 
exclaiming,  '  By  Jasus,  I  think  you're  right/  jumped 
up  to  carry  the  advice  given  him  into  effect.  '  Hullo/ 
called  after  him  his  disinterested  adviser,  'before 
going,  you  may  as  well  unfasten  my  hands  and  set 
me  free.'  But  no,  the  Irishman,  though  he  slipped 
out  of  his  engagement  to  suit  himself,  still  retained 
a  queer  kind  of  loyalty  to  the  elder  brother,  and  felt 
that  he  could  not,  as  a  gentleman,  take  any  active 
steps  to  frustrate  his  murderous  purpose.  So  off  he 
went,  leaving  '  the  body '  still  in  bonds,  but  this  was 
of  little  consequence,  as,  being  now  unguarded,  it  was 


270  FARMER  THOMPSON 

able  to  remove  itself  and  become  a  bookseller  again. 
He  soon  wrestled  himself  out  of  his  manacles,  and 
reappeared,  late  at  night,  before  the  Rothbury  inn, 
rousing  its  landlord,  and  telling  his  story  as  I  have 
told  it  to  you.  The  Irish  accomplice,  as  had  been 
predicted,  got  clean  off  with  the  Saxon  gold  safe 
about  him,  and  transferred  his  attentions,  let  us  hope, 
to  wheat  and  barley  elsewhere.  But  the  elder  brother 
was  immediately  arrested.  When  the  trial  came  off, 
the  circumstances  were  so  strange  and  inexplicable, 
that  we  barristers  thought,  '  Oh,  the  prisoner  at  the 
bar,  though  he  may  have  intended  to  bully  and 
frighten  his  enemy,  cannot  really  have  formed  any 
such  black  designs  as  are  imputed  to  him.'  But,  lo 
and  behold,  Farmer  Thompson  entered  the  box,  and 
proved  in  the  most  straightforward  manner,  that  the 
elder  of  the  two  booksellers  had  visited  him  about 
ten  o'clock  on  the  evening  in  question,  had  invented 
some  plausible  excuse  for  borrowing  the  cart  and 
the  sheet,  and,  added  Farmer  Thompson,  '  As  I  had 
known  him  for  forty  years,  and  always  believed  in 
him  as  an  honest  man,  I  lent  him  the  things  he 
wanted,  and  he  drove  away.'  This  settled  the  ver- 
dict, and  the  man  was  found  guilty,  but  the  queer- 
ness  of  the  case  did  not  end  even  there.  Baron 
Alderson,  the  presiding  judge,  sentenced  the  prisoner 
to  fifteen  years'  transportation,  but  just  as  the  culprit's 
head  was  disappearing  under  the  dock,  he  called  him 
back  with  the  utmost  politeness,  remarking,  '  I  beg 
your  pardon,  but  I  have  made  a  mistake ;  I  have  con- 


BAKON  ALDEESON'S  APOLOGY— TOM  HODGSON     271 

demned  you  to  fifteen  years'  penal  servitude,  but  I  find 
on  looking  at  the  Act  of  Parliament,  that  I  cannot 
give  you  less  than  twenty.  However,  it  makes  no 
difference  to  you  ;  either  term  will  see  the  end  of 
your  natural  life.'  This  was  in  all  probability  quite 
true,  but  one  may  doubt  whether  it  was  within 
Alderson's  province  to  make  so  cock  sure  of  it. 

Another  singular  trial  took  place  during  my 
youth,  as  to  which  I  cannot  fix  the  exact  date,  but 
since  a  friend  of  mine  was  mixed  up  in  it,  I  may  as 
well  give  what  account  of  it  I  can  in  this  part  of  the 
book.  I  must  add,  however,  that  not  being  per- 
sonally cognisant  of  the  details,  I  will  not  pledge 
myself  to  their  perfect  accuracy — as  I  do  in  the 
trials  spoken  of  before. 

Tom  Hodgson,  the  manager  of  a  pack  of  hounds 
in  the  east  of  Yorkshire,  lodged  from  year  to  year 
with  a  well-to-do  man  of  business  in  Beverley.  This 
man  being  without  children,  he  had  adopted  a  niece, 
who  was  regarded  by  him,  so  at  least  everybody 
thought,  as  if  she  were  his  own  daughter.  Then  his 
health  failed  him,  and  a  medical  man,  named  Turn- 
bull  (he  was  afterwards  famous  for  a  time  as  an 
aurist  in  London),  took  her  place  in  his  favour  with- 
out anybody  being  aware  of  it. 

One  evening  Hodgson  came  back  from  hunting 
wet,  tired,  and  hungry.  He  was  called  into  the  sick 
man's  room,  as  he  passed  it,  to  witness  his  will. 
Anxious  to  free  himself  as  soon  as  possible,  he 
was  allowed  somehow  (there  could  have  been  no 


272  INVERTED  ATTESTATION 

solicitor  present)  to  hurry  through  the  operation  in  a 
headlong  sort  of  manner,  and  to  go  his  way. 

Shortly  afterwards  the  man  died,  and  to  every- 
body's surprise,  Turnbull  came"  before  the  world  as 
the  principal,  if  not  the  sole  legatee,  the  niece 
being  practically  disinherited.  The  family  solicitor 
thought  it  as  well  to  ask  Hodgson,  who,  I  must 
point  out,  was  the  simplest  and  most  unpractical 
person  to  be  found  anywhere,  what,  so  far  as  he 
knew,  had  really  happened.  l  Well,'  answered  Hodg- 
son, '  I  went  to  the  table  and  signed  my  name,  then 
the  testator  signed  his.'  '  You  mean,'  replied  the 
man  of  law,  '  that  he  signed  his  name,  and  that  when 
he  had  done  so,  you  followed  him.'  '  Not  at  all ! '  re- 
torted Hodgson ;  '  I  mean  what  I  say.'  In  point  of  fact, 
the  testator  had  witnessed  his  signature,  not  he  the 
testator's.  The  will  was  accordingly  disputed,  and  on 
Hodgson's  testimony  upset.  Scarlett,  Turnbull's  advo- 
cate, got  very  angry  when  this  unexpected  point  ex- 
ploded under  his  feet  like  a  spring  gun,  and  it  being 
impossible  for  him  to  turn  any  redder  (for  his  name 
was  pale  as  compared  with  his  complexion),  grew, 
as  I  was  told,  absolutely  purple  with  rage.  The 
verdict  being  given,  Turnbull,  rendered  furious  by 
his  disappointment,  indicted  Hodgson  (for  conspi- 
racy I  suppose)  and  he  was  tried  by  Lord  Tenterden. 
Now  at  that  moment  Lord  Tenterden,  I  understand, 
had  the  gout  and  was  not  in  the  best  of  tempers. 
When,  therefore,  lots  of  great  people — peers, 
baronets,  squires,  et  hoc  genus  omne — rushed  into  the 


TENTERDEN  DISTRUSTS  THE  ARISTOCRACY       273 

witness-box  to  speak  for  Hodgson,  who  was  about  the 
most  popular  man  in  the  three  Ridings,  he  settled  in 
his  own  mind  that  an  unscrupulous  aristocracy  had 
entered  into  a  combination  to  over-ride  justice  on 
behalf  of  their  friend,  and  summed  up  breast  high 
against  the  defendant.  Hodgson  was  found  guilty, 
and  bound  over  to  come  up  and  receive  judgment 
within  a  certain  tune.  Luckily  for  him,  however, 
Turnbull  had  adopted  a  bold,  broad,  and  enterprising 
style  of  aurism,  and  the  result  was,  that  according  to 
report,  he  did  a  lot  of  mischief.  One  patient  at  least 
had  been  carried  into  the  street  out  of  his  consulting- 
room  quite  dead,  and  many  others  were  much  injured. 
He  also,  I  believe,  got  into  debt  and  other  scrapes,  so 
that  he  had  to  levant.  Hence  Hodgson  was  never 
summoned  to  receive  sentence,  still,  he  remained 
maundering  till  the  end  of  his  life  in  a  state  of  utter 
bewilderment  and  mystification  as  to  what  error  he 
had  fallen  into,  and  why  he  had  been  tried. 

To  end  my  circuit  experiences.  Whilst  I  was 
still  at  the  Bar,  on  one  occasion  during  the  Lent 
Assizes,  we  had  a  great  playgoing  time  of  it.  A 
company  of  actors  came  down  from  London  to  intro- 
duce, yes,  I  may  say  literally  to  introduce,  Shak- 
speare  to  some  of  the  citizens  of  Liverpool.  The 
ignorance  of  many  people  in  the  boxes,  who,  if  not 
well  educated,  were  perfectly  well  dressed  and  well 
mannered,  surprised  us  not  a  little.  Certain  of  their 
remarks  would  have  been  by  no  means  out  of  place 
in  the  Globe  Theatre,  towards  the  end  of  the  six- 


274  'MUCH  ADO  ABOUT  NOTHING' 

teenth  century.  '  Oh !  the  old  villain ! '  or  some  such 
phrase  was  applied  to  Falstaif  by  several  persons  at 
once,  when  he  tries  to  cajole  Prince  Hal  by  saying 
'  that  he  owed  him  his  love,  a  love  worth  a  million.' 
And  in  '  Much  Ado  about  Nothing/  the  Elizabethan 
joke  of  Beatrice,  when  she  demurs,  somewhat  broadly 
no  doubt,  to  Don  Pedro's  plan  of  getting  her  a  hus- 
band, fell  perfectly  flat,  till,  just  as  it  had  all  but 
evaporated  into  space,  a  jolly  butcher  in  the  gallery 
caught  the  meaning,  and  burst  into  a  roar  of  delight. 
From  him  the  infection  spread,  and  the  house  gradu- 
ally passed  into  shouts  of  laughter  all  round.  At 
the  same  time  this  want  of  familiarity  with  *  Much 
Ado  about  Nothing '  is  not  confined  entirely  to 
Liverpool.  A  young  gentleman  in  London  last  year, 
I  was  told,  said  to  a  relative  of  his,  '  My  dear  aunt, 
most  of  the  new  plays  are  rubbish,  but  there  is  one 
that  you  really  ought  to  see.  It  is  very  amusing,  and 
not  only  that,  it  is  also  extremely  well  written. 
They  call  it  "  Much  Ado  about  Nothing."  ' 

One  may  say  this,  however,  for  the  young  gen- 
tleman in  question,  that  whatever  his  bookish  ac- 
quirements may,  or  may  not  be,  his  natural  taste  is 
undeniably  good,  and  that  the  divine  Williams,  when 
the  criticism  reaches  him,  will  probably  be  better 
pleased  with  this  spontaneous  applause  from  a  born 
admirer,  than  with  the  aesthetic  eulogies  of  many 
more  highly  trained  and  carefully  drilled  partisans. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

Appointed  Revising  Barrister — Justice  defied  at  Bradford — Literature 
of  the  period — Carlyle — Tennyson — Browning — Best  man  to  Mr. 
Gladstone  at  his  marriage — My  own  marriage — Appointed  Receiver- 
General  of  Customs— Mr.  Grenville — Highwaymen  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century — Mr.  Grenville's  death. 

AFTER  a  circuit  or  two,  though  I  got  no  briefs,  I 
was  appointed  a  revising  barrister,  and  saw  in  the 
next  two  or  three  years  a  good  deal  of  Yorkshire 
life.  West  Riding  boroughs  I  revised  two  or  three 
times,  and  the  West  Rid  ing  itself  once.  There  was  a 
district  between  Settle  and  Ripon  which  I  travelled 
over  with  the  late  Mr^  Pickering,  my  coadjutor,  and 
thought  well  worth  visiting.  We  hired  a  post-chaise 
at  Settle,  and  passed  through  the  valley  of  the  Upper 
Wharfe,  just  where  the  river  divides  itself  into  two 
branches.  We  then  proceeded  through  a  pastoral 
country,  without  towns,  without  villages,  without 
visible  squires,  so  that  whenever  we  changed  horses, 
it  was  at  a  house  the  centre  of  a  grazing  farm  in 
the  first  degree,  an  inn  only  in  the  second.  What 
changes  have  passed  over  this  part  of  the  country 
since  then  I  do  not  know,  but  I  presume  that  rail- 
ways have  altered  its  character  more  or  less.  I 
should  be  sorry  to  hear  that  it  had  been  entirely 


276  DISCUSSION  AT  BRADFORD 

disfeatured,  for,  five-and-forty  years  ago  it  was  de- 
lightfully fresh,  rural,  and  unspoilt.  I  got  into  a 
difficulty  once  at  Bradford,  but  extricated  myself,  I 
think,  deftly  and  discreetly  enough.  Now  the '  Have  a 
cake  lads,'  as  (from  the  recruiting  sergeant's  traditional 
practice  of  going  over  the  moors  round  about,  with 
an  oatcake  fixed  at  the  end  of  his  bayonet),  these 
Yorkshire  hill  men  were  then  called,  are  formidable 
foes  to  encounter.  Indeed  at  Halifax,  though  a  tall 
man,  and  one  who  had  grown  up  under  M.  Hamon's 
tuition  into  somewhat  more  than  average  strength, 
I  remember  seeming  to  myself,  among  the  stalwart 
voters  there  assembled,  with  the  single  exception  of 
my  cockney  clerk,  if  not  the  shortest,  at  least  the 
slightest  and  weakest  man  in  the  room.  Whatever 
may  have  been  the  case  at  Halifax,  a  red-bearded 
giant,  perfectly  indifferent  to  the  majesty  with  which 
justice  is  said  to  clothe  herself,  came  to  defend  his 
vote  on  the  Bradford  list,  in  a  perfect  frenzy  of  wrath. 
The  professional  objector  was  a  little  tallow-faced 
Tory  attorney  of  about  five  foot  three,  whom  his  an- 
tagonist could  have  tossed  like  a  bull  had  he  chosen 
to  try.  In  point  of  fact,  he  could  have  thrashed  the 
Tory  attorney,  the  presiding  judge,  who  had,  alas,  no 
javelin  men  behind  him,  and  the  judge's  cockney 
clerk,  all  three  together,  with  his  left  hand.  As  it 
was,  he  contented  himself  for  the  moment  with 
shaking  his  fist  at  the  enemy  across  the  table,  and 
fiercely  exclaiming,  '  You  damned  little  lickplatter,  I 
will  break  every  bone  in  your  skin  ! '  This  was  very 


SUCCESSFULLY  CONCLUDED  277 

shocking,  but  what  was  I  to  do  ?  Now,  besides 
being  really  grateful  to  him  for  introducing  me  to 
the  word  lickplatter,  a  far  more  picturesque  expression 
than  lickspittle,  the  phrase  in  common  use,  I  knew, 
having,  as  I  said  before,  no  javelin  men  behind  me, 
that  if  I  adopted  the  high  and  mighty  line  with  him, 
it  would  not  have  the  smallest  effect ;  nay  that  I 
might  very  likely  be  obliged  to  prosecute  him  for  an 
assault,  a  proceeding  which,  taking  his  size,  strength, 
and  temper  into  consideration,  I  should  have  adopted 
with  the  sincerest  reluctance ;  my  best  chance,  I 
thought,  lay  in'  an  appeal  to  his  business  instincts 
and  natural  Yorkshire  thrift.  '  Now,'  said  I,  *  I  am 
not  going  to  stand  any  of  this  nonsense  here  ;  if  you 
cannot  behave  properly  I  shall  adjourn  the  court 
and  go  out  for  a  walk.  This  may  not  suit  the  con- 
venience of  your  neighbours,  and  of  yourself,  but  it 
will  suit  me  perfectly,  as  I  shall  be  on  duty  for 
another  day,  and  pocket  an  extra  ten  guineas.'  He 
recognised  the  force  of  this  argument,  and  became 
as  docile  as  a  carefully  trained  elephant,  submitting 
himself  to  my  decision,  whatever  it  was,  quietly  and 
silently. 

During  all  this  time,  I  greatly  enjoyed  the  society 
of  my  fellow-barristers.  A  long  list  of  names  comes 
back  upon  my  mind,  recalling  men  whom  I  greatly 
liked  and  esteemed,  and  conversations  full  of  interest. 
If  I  had  kept  a  diary,  many  things  well  worth 
recording,  which  have  dropt  away  from  my  memory, 
might  have  reappeared  in  this  book  ;  but  then  I  am 


278  CARLYLE 

not  the  sort  of  man  who  keeps  a  diaiy,  and  hence 
the  reader  must  take  what  he  can  get.  Between  my 
professional  visits  into  Yorkshire,  I  read,  among 
other  books,  Carlyle's  '  French  Revolution,'  and  its 
effect  upon  me  as  upon  other  men  was  intense. 
Since  then  I  have  always  looked  upon  him  as  the 
greatest  literary  force  of  our  age  (in  England  I 
mean,  for  I  am  not  measuring  him,  either  for  better 
or  worse,  against  Victor  Hugo).  Tennyson  and 
Browning  had  also  dawned  upon  us,  and  were 
advancing,  the  first  by  leaps  and  bounds,  the  second 
more  gradually,  into  their  present  reputation  and 
power  over  the  hearts  of  their  contemporaries.  We 
worshippers  of  Carlyle  have  been  of  late  much  dis- 
turbed by  revelations  about  our  strange  god,  from 
priests  of  his  who  might  as  well  have  held  their 
tongues.  We  have  to  console  ourselves  as  well  as  we 
can  with  the  reflection,  that  those  parts  of  his  cha- 
racter and  his  genius  which  are  bright,  burn  on  with 
undiminished  lustre,  though  there  may  be  spots  in 
the  sun.  In  truth,  the  mixture  of  littleness  with  his 
greatness,  of  weakness  with  his  power,  always  brings 
back  to  my  mind  a  fable  in  a  child's  poetry  book, 
which  when  I  read  it  first  struck  me  as  full  of 
humour  and  good  sense. 

There  was  a  kingly  elephant,  the  monarch  of  his 
tribe,  standing  far  above  all  competition.  The  rest  of 
the  herd  reverenced  and  adored  him  as  they  were 
bound  to  do,  when  suddenly,  to  their  horror,  the 
forest  echoes  to  his  tempestuous  roarings  ;  it  seemed 


AN  ILL-USED  ELEPHANT  279 

as  if  he  were  smitten  with  mortal  agony.  His 
trembling  subjects  gathered  themselves  together,  to 
discuss  what  terrible  misfortune  could  have  befallen 

him — 

Perhaps  even  now  he  flees  away, 

Pierced  by  the  hunter's  dart, 
To  flood  some  dreary  cavern 

With  the  life-blood  of  his  heart. 

His  yells  continuing  without  any  abatement,  they 
moved  on  in  a  body  to  give  him  help  and  comfort, 
but  on  arriving  at  the  spot  where  he  was,  they  found 
him  safe  enough,  though  in  a  furious  temper,  and 
this  was  the  cause  of  his  wrath — 

I  laid  me  down  to  take  a  nap, 

Beside  this  crystal  spring, 
And  the  largest  fly  you  ever  saw 

Awoke  me  with  his  sting. 

Still  the  fact  of  his  being  sensitive  to  trifling  annoy- 
ances did  not  diminish  his  strength  when  he  was 
called  upon  to  put  it  forth  for  some  good  purpose  ; 
and  so  let  us  say  of  Carlyle. 

In  1839  I  attended  Mr.  Gladstone's  wedding  at 
Hawarden  as  his  best  man.  Catherine  Glynne  and 
her  sister  Mary,  both  beautiful  women,  were  married 
on  the  same  day,  the  first  to  William  Gladstone,  the 
second  to  George,  Lord  Lyttelton.  The  occasion  was 
a  very  interesting  one,  from  the  high  character  of  the 
two  bridegrooms,  and  the  warmth  of  affection  felt 
for  the  two  charming  young  ladies,  by  all  their 
friends  and  neighbours,  in  every  rank  of  life.  There 

19 


280  MR  GLADSTONE'S  MARRIAGE 

was  a  depth  and  genuineness  of  sympathy  diffused 
around,  which,  as  the  French  say,  spoke  for  itself 
without  any  words.  Some  verses  of  mine  referring  to 
this  common  sentiment  are  published  in  my  collected 
poems  ;  they  were  welcomed  at  the  time  by  the  two 
families  very  kindly  and  pleasantly.  My  anticipa- 
tions of  Mr.  Gladstone's  remarkable  career,  hazarded 
in  them,  have  not  been  falsified,  though  perhaps  it 
was  just  as  well  for  the  verses  that  I  did  not  foresee 
the  exact  course  it  would  take.  Nay,  had  a  prophet 
on  that  morning  pointed  out  to  Mr.  Gladstone  him- 
self, that  he  was  intended,  in  after  years,  to  threaten, 
if  not  to  destroy  the  House  of  Lords,  and  to  become 
the  idol  of  the  mob,  in  the  hope  of  breaking  up  the 
British  Empire,  we  might  have  had  something  like  a 
repetition  of  Hazael's  vehement  protest  against  the 
solemn  warnings  of  Elisha ;  but  che  sara  sara,  and 
I  do  not  pretend,  seeing  that  my  youthful  opinions, 
then  identical  with  Mr.  Gladstone's,  have  no  doubt 
fossilised  themselves  in  the  Civil  Service,  to  say  more 
than  I  can  help  about  a  change  of  feeling  that  I  do 
not  understand. 

After  having  been  two  or  three  years  a  revising 
barrister,  in  1844  I  was  myself  fortunate  enough 
to  obtain  as  my  wife,  Sidney  Williams  Wynn,  the 
youngest  daughter  of  the  late  Right  Hon.  Charles 
Williams  Wynn.  I  had,  of  course,  been  in  love  once 
or  twice  before,  but  met  with  disappointments,  as 
men  who  are  not  rich  often  do.  I  hope  it  will  not 
be  considered  a  reflection  upon  my  early  charmers, 


MY  OWN  MARRIAGE  281 

whom  I  yet  remember  tenderly  (they  both,  alas,  died 
long  ago),  if  I  believe  that  each  of  these  disappoint- 
ments, bitter  as  they  might  be  at  the  time,  was  a 
blessing  in  disguise.  My  wife  and  her  three  sisters, 
with  whom  also  I  lived  on  terms  of  the  warmest 
affection,  were  women  of  a  very  noble  type.  Pres- 
cott  Hewitt  said  to  iny  daughter  once,  'I  thought 
your  two  elder  aunts  the  two  bravest  women  I 
ever  saw,  but  I  doubt  whether  your  Aunt  Lindesay 
is  not  braver  even  than  they.'  That  my  wife  was 
endowed  with  these  family  qualities  in  at  least  as 
high  a  degree  as  the  others,  those  who  remember 
her  will  know  perfectly  well  without  any  assurance 
of  mine.  In  addition  to  extraordinary  courage, 
these  four  ladies  possessed  all  the  virtues  to  which 
courage  is  akin ;  frankness,  generosity,  loftiness  of 
mind,  forgetfulness  of  self,  and  a  power  of  sym- 
pathy hardly  to  be  equalled.  But  in  a  book  of 
this  kind  I  do  not  feel  disposed  to  dwell,  at  any 
length,  upon  the  joys  or  sorrows  of  my  private  life  j 
the  world  at  large  has  little  to  do  with  them.  Those 
who  have  been  my  friends  and  companions  are  fully 
aware  how  much  I  must  have  suffered,  by  losing  first 
my  dear  wife,  then  a  beloved  daughter  in  the  bloom 
of  youth  and  beauty,  and  lastly  a  son  of  whom  any 
father  might  be  proud,  just  as  he  began  to  gain 
honour  in  his  profession,  to  which  he  had  devoted 
himself  with  untiring  energy  and  zeal ;  whilst  those 
who  are  unacquainted  with  me,  and  with  them,  can- 
not be  expected  to  take  a  deeper  interest  in  my 


282      APPOINTED  RECEIVER -GENERAL  OF  CUSTOMS 

happiness  or  affliction,  than  in  the  happiness  or  afflic- 
tion of  any  one  else. 

My  marriage,  as  I  was  a  very  poof  man,  made  it 
necessary  for  me  to  look  out  for  some  more  remune- 
rative occupation  than  the  periodical  donning  of  a  wig 
and  gown  by  a  briefless  barrister,  and  shortly  after- 
wards, Sir  Kobert  Peel  offered  me  the  Assistant- 
Solicitorship  of  the  Excise,  and  in  a  year  the 
Receiver-Generalship  of  Customs,  partly  as  a  tribute 
to  the  services  of  my  father  as  the  Chairman  of  the 
Excise,  but  mainly  in  order  to  discharge  a  debt  (this 
he  said  in  so  many  words)  to  my  father-in-law, 
Charles  Wynn.  That  Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  consider 
himself  so  far  Sir  Robert  Peel's  representative  after- 
wards, as  to  own  that  this  particular  responsibility 
devolved  upon  him,  I  had  to  learn  all  in  good  time. 
These  offers  I  was  kind  enough  to  accept.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  by  so  doing  I  gave  up  all  hopes  of 
legal  or  parliamentary  distinction,  resting  content 
with  a  safe  and  respectable  mediocrity.  Nobody  but 
myself  can  exactly  say  what  this  sacrifice  amounted 
to,  still,  as  I  have  already  confessed  that  I  was  not 
meant  by  nature  to  become  either  a  great  lawyer  or 
a  great  orator,  I  cannot  blow  my  own  trumpet  effec- 
tively here.  What  I  do  complain  of  is  that  such  a 
mediocrity,  however  respectable,  is  no  longer  safe,  and 
that  your  most  intimate  friend,  if  he  happen  to  be  a 
Minister  bent  upon  economy,  may  find  it  his  duty  to 
fling  you  down  into  practical  ruin  at  a  time  of  life 
when  it  is  hopeless  to  think  of  returning  to  the  Bar, 


THOMAS  GRENVILLE  283 

or  of  looking  out  for  a  new  employment,  Whereas, 
if  I  had  stuck  to  my  original  profession,  I  think  I 
may  say  without  vanity  that  I  was  at  least  good 
enough  to  have  reached,  after  a  certain  amount  of 
hard  work,  a  County  Court,  or  perhaps  a  Colonial 
Judgeship. 

After  accepting  this  post,  my  proceedings  grew 
to  be  monotonous  enough,  and  I  cannot  say  that  any 
recollections  of  mine  possess  a  greater  claim  upon 
public  attention  than  those  of  the  average  Brown, 
Jones,  or  Eobinson.  Still,  even  Brown,  Jones,  or 
Robinson  may  be  worth  listening  to  about  historical, 
or  other  events,  that  occurred  before  the  majority  of  our 
present  Englishmen  were  born,  and  therefore  I  shall 
go  on  writing  to  the  best  of  my  ability.  Between 
my  marriage  and  my  becoming  a  Civil  Servant  in 
Thames  Street,  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Mr.  Wynn's  uncle, 
Thomas  Grenville,  who  had  been  in  the  front  rank  of 
life,  politically  as  well  as  socially,  from  early  youth. 
He  was  then  past  his  ninetieth  year,  and  as  his  very 
considerable  faculties,  memory  included,  were  as  fresh 
and  vigorous  as  if  he  had  just  come  of  age,  I  need 
not  say  that  his  acquaintance  was  well  worth  having. 
I  used  to  dine  with  him  at  his  house  in  Hamilton 
Place,  perhaps  twice  a  week,  during  the  winters  of 
1845,  1846,  helping  to  make  up  his  nightly  rubber. 
I  am  bound  to  add  that  he  did  not  look  upon  my 
whist-playing  powers  as  beyond  criticism,  still  he  ac- 
cepted them,  with  his  usual  urbanity,  for  what  they 
were  worth.  In  the  meantime  it  was  a  real  pleasure 


284       CUSTOMS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

to  listen  to  his  talk,  for  though  perfectly  simple  and 
unaffected,  the  manner  in  which  he  spoke  English 
was  beyond  praise  ;  his  sentences  were  clear,  nervous, 
and  incisive,  but  yet  with  an  old-world  ease  and  grace 
about  them,  as  difficult  to  meet  with  now  as  the 
honest  man  of  Diogenes.  Being  several  years  older 
than  his  cousin,  Mr.  Pitt,  with  whom  and  against 
whom  he  had  acted  in  Parliament  during  many 
Sessions,  the  side  lights  thrown  by  him  upon  the 
events  and  customs  of  the  eighteenth  century  were 
instructive  in  the  highest  degree.  His  account,  for 
instance,  of  the  manner  in  which  he  recovered  his 
health,  when  it  threatened  to  fail  him  in  his  early 
middle  age,  shows  how  strongly  the  life  of  man  takes 
its  colour  from  habit.  He  said  to  me,  '  Then  it  was 
that  I  felt  ill,  and  could  not  imagine  the  cause.  I 
thought  first  that  perhaps  I  had  been  taking  too 
much  exercise,  but  I  soon  found  that  had  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  I  read  too  much  perhaps,  so  I  shut  up 
my  books.  Again,  it  might  be  that  I  had  accustomed 
myself  to  sitting  up  too  late,  so  I  went  to  bed  earlier. 
But  the  results  were  worthless.  When  all  at  once, 
by.  a  sort  of  Providential  instinct,  it  flashed  across 
my  mind,  that  for  the  last  thirty  years  I  had  been 
drinking,  day  after  day,  at  least  a  bottle  and  a  half  of 
port  wine,  and  that  possibly  it  was  to  that  practice  I 
might  refer  the  threatened  break-up  of  my  constitu- 
tion. Accordingly  I  dropt  it  at  once,  and  speedily 
recovered  my  strength.' 

Now  Mr.  Grenville  had  always  been  a  quiet,  well- 


CHARLES,  DUKE  OF  NORFOLK,  AND  CHARLES  FOX     285 

conducted  gentleman,  never  giving  way  to  such  ex- 
cesses as  were  habitually  indulged  in  by  Charles  Fox, 
and  his  companion  the  other  well-known  Charles, 
then  Duke  of  Norfolk.  He  merely  took,  one  night 
with  another,  what  was  considered  the  legitimate 
quantity  of  wine  for  a  decent  member  of  society  to 
swallow,  at  or  after  dinner,  till  the  custom  assumed 
the  aspect,  not  of  a  mischievous  tradition,  but  of  a 
regular  law  of  nature.  Hence  Mr.  Grenville's  notion 
that  it  might  possibly  be  unwholesome,  could  only 
be  arrived  at  in  reasoning  by  a  process  of  exhaustion. 
Charles,  Duke  of  Norfolk,  of  whom  I  have  just 
spoken,  was,  I  suppose,  a  giant  in  strength.  He 
once  explained  to  my  father  how  he  and  Charles  Fox 
respectively  used  to  grapple  with  the  results  of  an 
orgie  at  Brooks's.  Pitt,  he  said,  never  could  address 
the  House  unless  helped  by  the  stimulus  of  wine  ; 
Fox,  on  the  other  hand,  could  not  stand  so  much 
as  a  single  glass  before  speaking.  '  But  when  the 
debate  was  over,  we  adjourned  to  Brooks's,  and  there 
we  drank  a  great  deal  of  wine ;  yes,  sir,  a  great 
deal  of  wine.  I  used  to  get  up  the  next  morning 
at  six  o'clock,  walk  three  times  round  the  Park, 
and  have  a  bowl  of  new  milk  warm  from  the  cow  ; 
then,  about  ten  o'clock,  I  generally  lounged  over  to 
Charles  Fox's  lodgings,  and  found  him  sitting  up  in 
bed  with  a  racking  headache,  sipping  green  tea.1 
The  statesman  rake  certainly  occupied  an  inferior 
position  to  the  rake  simple  on  these  occasions,  and 
indeed,  as  might  have  been  expected,  the  milk-assimi- 


286  BOUND  NOT  TO  SNEEZE 

lating  Duke  survived  his  green-tea  boon  companion 
for  many  years.  A  story,  which  I  got  from  Mr. 
Grenville  of  a  friend  belonging  to  a  former  epoch, 
illustrates  again,  curiously  enough,  how  the  rules  of 
what  men  consider  high  breeding  and  good  taste 
vary  from  time  to  time.  Once,  when  they  were  talk- 
ing together,  a  serious  distortion  passed  across  the 
old  man's  face.  Mr.  Grenville  was  quite  alarmed 
(this  shows,  I  think,  that  the  difference  in  years  be- 
tween them  was  very  great)  and  fancied  a  fit  of  some 
kind  must  be  coming  on.  '  Oh,  you  need  not  be 
frightened,'  exclaimed  the  visitor,  recovering  himself, 
'  I  am  all  right.  But  you  see  when  I  first  entered 
upon  life,  it  was  considered  a  gross  act  of  ill-breeding 
to  sneeze  in  company.  You  had  to  master  the  ten- 
dency somehow  or  other,  and  the  result  is,  that  for 
me  and  my  contemporaries,  sneezing  has  become  a 
lost  art.  I  only  wish  I  could  reacquire  it  now,  but 
alas,  it  is  too  late.' 

Another  anecdote  I  got  from  him,  and  thought  a 
good  one,  had  reference  to  an  enormously  massive 
piece  of  plate,  belonging  to  one  of  the  Lords  Say  and 
Sele ;  he  was  very  proud  of  his  possession,  and  com- 
placently observed  from  the  head  of  his  own  dinner 
table,  '  Its  weight  gives  it  this  advantage  at  any 
rate,  no  robber  could  carry  it  off ;  I  would  give  it  to 
anyone  who  succeeded  in  doing  so.'  Upon  this  his 
nephew,  Mr.  Fiennes  (many  Fienneses  since,  we  know, 
have  been  distinguished  athletes),  described  by  Mr. 
Grenville  as  a  model  of  lithe  and  flexible  strength, 


LORD  SAY  AND  SELE'S  PIECE  OF  PLATE       287 

looked  at  it  and  said,  '  Well,  I  don't  know,  but  I 
think  I  could  get  it  out  of  the  room  if  I  tried.'  '  If 
you  do/  replied  his  uncle,  '  je  n'ai  que  ma  parole ; 
the  piece  of  plate  is  yours.'  The  nephew  at  once 
wriggled  himself  underneath  the  vessel,  shouldering 
it,  to  use  Mr.  Grenville's  illustration,  '  as  a  fox 
shoulders  a  goose,'  and  began  to  crawl  away  on  all 
fours,  with  his  prey  quite  secured,  as  easily  as  pos- 
sible. But  happening  to  turn  round  in  triumph  just 
as  he  reached  the  door,  he  saw  that  Lord  Say  and 
Sele's  face  was  full  of  astonishment,  wrath,  and  dis- 
gust. Then,  suddenly  recollecting  that,  after  all, 
this  was  an  uncle  from  whom  things  greater  than 
silver  might  be  expected,  he  instantly  collapsed, 
panting  out,  in  the  most  artistic  manner,  '  You  are 
quite  right,  uncle  ;  the  job  is  too  much  for  any  single 
human  strength.'  Whether  he  earned  his  pardon 
by  this  discreet  act  of  self-suppression,  I  never  heard. 
Not  the  least  interesting  of  Mr.  Grenville's  recol- 
lections were  those  relating  to  highwaymen.  I  shall 
recall  two  of  them  ;  the  first,  in  which  the  robber  may 
be  said  to  have  gained  a  moral  as  well  as  a  physical 
victory  over  him,  and  Lord  Derby  (the  founder  of 
the  great  Epsom  race),  the  second  where  the  triumph 
of  mind  rested  with  his  sister,  Lady  Williams  Wynn, 
though  her  purse  and  watch,  alas,  went  the  way  of 
her  brother's.  Lord  Derby  and  Mr.  Grenville  were 
on  their  return  from  Newmarket.  As  they  crossed 
Finchley  Common  the  attack  took  place.  Their  ser- 
vants, as  Mr.  Grenville  thought,  behaved  very  ill. 


288      HIGHWAYMAN  GIVING  A  MORAL  LECTURE 

Now,  how  far  a  man  who  undertakes  to  brush  your 
clothes,  and  to  bring  up  your  hot  water  on  receiving 
a  certain  annual  stipend,  is  bound  to  stay  and  be 
killed  or  wounded  in  defending  your  property,  is 
perhaps  an  open  question.  In  this  case  the  servants 
gave  a  verdict  in  their  own  favour,  and  ran  away  at 
once,  leaving  then*  masters  to  fight  it  out  as  best 
they  could  by  themselves.  The  highwaymen  outnum- 
bered and  out-weaponed  the  self- defenders,  and  after 
a  certain  amount  of  reciprocal  popping,  the  gentle- 
men gave  in.  What  mainly  saved  them  from  serious 
mischief,  according  to  Mr.  Grenville,  was  the  exceed- 
ingly luxurious  manner  in  which  Lord  Derby's  car- 
riage had  been  stuffed.  The  robbers  got  behind  it, 
and  kept  firing,  as  they  thought,  upon  the  travellers 
in  perfect  safety  so  far  as  they  were  concerned  ;  but 
the  travellers  inside  were  just  as  safe  as  they  were, 
the  bullets  dying  away  in  the  dense  masses  of  com- 
fort, provided  by  Lord  Derby  for  himself  and  his 
friends.  Still,  the  gentlemen,  after  exhausting  their 
ammunition,  gave  in.  Upon  this,  the  leader  of  the 
brigands,  not  content  with  carrying  off  his  hardly 
earned  booty,  thought  fit  to  read  his  vanquished 
enemies  a  moral  lecture.  '  What  scoundrels  you  must 
be,'  he  said,  '  to  fire  at  gentlemen  who  risk  their  lives 
upon  the  road ! '  Now  one  sees  what  was  his  view  of 
the  case,  and  there  is  really  something  in  it.  Pistol 
versus  pistol  may  be  fair  enough,  but  pistol  versus 
pistol  plus  gibbet  in  the  background,  is  a  contest  in 
which  '  the  gentleman  who  risks  his  life  upon  the 


LADY  WILLIAMS  WINN  289 

road '  may  not  unreasonably  consider  himself  over- 
handicapped  ;  there  is  another  side  to  the  question 
of  course,  but  it  is  not  his  business  to  give  effect  to 
that.  Lady  Wynn's  adventure  ended,  I  have  said, 
more  honourably  for  her  than  Mr.  Grenville's  for 
him.  This  is  the  family  legend.  She  was  journey- 
ing from  London  with  her  two  daughters,  when  a 
man  stopped  the  carriage  and  demanded  their 
money.  Now  her  particular  anxiety  was  that  the 
maid,  a  good  girl  who  helped  to  support  her  own 
family,  should  not  be  robbed  of  the  wages  she  had 
just  received.  So,  after  letting  herself  be  stripped  of 
all  her  own  money  and  valuables,  and  saying  to  her 
daughters,  '  My  dears,  give  up  your  purses  and 
watches  at  once,'  she  turned  sharp  round  upon  the 
highwayman,  and  probably  discerning  with  the 
quick  eye  of  an  experienced  woman  of  the  world, 
that  he  was  not  a  hardened  professional  ruffian, 
addressed  him  thus,  '  I  suppose,  sir,  you  are  too 
much  of  a  gentleman  to  think  of  stealing  the  hardly 
earned  wages  of  a  poor  servant  girl.'  This  appeal 
proved  successful ;  he  consented  to  forego  that  portion 
of  his  plunder.  And  then,  being  a  very  dignified  old 
lady,  she  went  on  in  her  stateliest  manner,  '  And  now, 
sir,  I  trust  that  you  will  withdraw  that  pistol,  as  I 
have  observed,  sir,  that  your  hand  shakes  very  much.' 
Now  that  I  am  talking  about  highwaymen.  I 
may  as  well  add  that  my  old  uncle  Sir  John,  of 
whom  I  have  spoken  elsewhere,  on  one  such  occasion 
was  much  more  seriously  engaged.  He  and  his 


290  A  SHOOTING  PAIN 

nephew,  Sir  Charles  Doyle,  drove  off  their  assailants, 
after  killing  one,  if  not  more  of  them.  Sir  John 
himself,  being  very  severely  wounded,  they  carried 
him  off  to  the  rector's  house  in  the  next  village,  and 
sent  for  a  surgeon.  '  I  am  afraid,  Sir  John,'  the 
surgeon  remarked,  '  that  you  are  suffering  great  pain.' 
1  Very  great  indeed/  was  the  reply.  '  May  I  ask,' 
the  surgeon  pursued,  '  what  kind  of  pain  ?  '  *  Well,' 
retorted  the  old  boy,  who  never  lost  either  his  readi- 
ness or  his  good  humour,  '  it  is  not  easy  to  describe 
exactly,  so  suppose  we  call  it  a  shooting  pain.'  This 
extra  and  unprofessional  infliction  was  rather  hard 
upon  him,  as  the  number  of  wounds  he  had  received 
in  action  is  not  easy  to  reckon  up  ;  he  must,  one 
would  think,  have  possessed  a  wonderful  constitu- 
tion, to  keep  on  enjoying  good  health,  after  all  that 
he  had  gone  through,  till  just  before  he  died  in  his 
eighty-fifth  year. 

I  have  said  that  I  helped  to  make  up  Mr.  Gren- 
ville's  rubber  at  the  end  of  his  life,  indeed  I  was  his 
partner,  two  days  before  his  death,  in  the  very  last 
games  he  played.  At  first  my  ill-luck  was  quite 
astounding ;  had  the  stakes  been  higher,  my  position 
would  really  have  been  embarrassing.  Even  as  it 
was,  to  lose  thirty  pounds  at  shilling  whist  in  six  or 
seven  weeks  could  hardly  be  looked  upon  as  a  trifle 
by  a  very  poor  man  like  myself.  My  opponents 
played  a  little  better  perhaps  than  I  did,  but  not 
much;  indeed,  up  to  that  period,  at  All  Souls  and 
elsewhere,  I  had  generally  come  off  a  winner.  A  good 


WIN  A  BET  AT  GOODWOOD  291 

many  of  these  shillings  went  over  from  time  to  time 
to  old  Lord  John  Fitzroy,  and  the  remembrance  of 
these  mishaps  gave  an  additional  zest  to  one  unex- 
pected triumph  I  gained  over  him  at  Goodwood.  We 
were  together  in  the  stand,  when  the  race  for  the 
Ham  stakes,  then  a  much  more  important  two-year- 
old  race  than  now,  was  about  to  be  contested.  He 
felt  quite  certain  either  Tingle  or  the  Italian  would 
win  ;  I  differed  from  him,  and  said,  '  There  seem  a 
number  of  good-looking  dark  colts  from  the  principal 
training  stables  on  the  ground,  if  I  bet  at  all  I  should 
back  the  field.'  He  offered  to  lay  me  two  to  one  on 
his  favourites.  My  answer  naturally  was,  '  I  never 
make  any  real  bets,  because  I  haven't  the  money  to 
spare,  but  if  you  do  not  mind  just  this  once  making 
it  two  sovereigns  to  one,  I  will  take  your  offer.'  No 
sooner  said  than  done.  The  horses  started  ;  Tingle 
was  beaten  early,  but  the  Italian  strode  away  in 
front,  and  at  the  corner  of  the  stand  seemed  so 
unmistakably  the  winner,  that  I  put  my  finger  and 
thumb  into  my  waistcoat-pocket  and  nipped  the  lost 
sovereign,  as  I  thought  it,  in  order  to  pay  up  at  once ; 
but  the  cowardly  brute,  when  about  six  yards  from 
home,  swerved  right  across  the  course,  and  let  two  of 
his  antagonists,  Hardinge  and  a  colt  of  Mr.  Bowes's, 
pass  the  post  before  him.  I  need  not  say  that  I 
relaxed  my  grip  upon  the  one  sovereign  with  right 
good  will,  and  held  out  my  open  hand  for  the  two. 
To  conclude,  there  was  a  cheerful  though  dignified 
self-possession  about  Mr.  Grenville,  that  lent  a  more 


292  DEATH  OF  MR.  GRENVILLE 

than  common  interest  to  the  close  of  his  long  career. 
Apparently,  though  not  unwilling  to  live,  he  con- 
sidered it  unmanly,  at  his  age,  to  try  and  prolong  life 
by  any  change  in  his  habits,  by  any  seeking  out  of 
new  precautions  and  comforts.  Accordingly,  it  was 
with  the  utmost  difficulty,  that  he  could  be  persuaded 
to  let  the  servants  light  a  fire  in  his  bedroom, 
because  he  thought  it  looked  like  effeminate  self- 
indulgence,  and  he  was  even  more  obstinate,  when 
urged  not  to  mount  a  cold  staircase  night  after  night, 
but  to  sleep  on  the  drawing-room  floor.  At  last  the 
end  drew  near,  and  Dr.  Fergusson  as  usual  was 
summoned,  and  was  met  thus  :  '  I  am  quite  ashamed, 
Dr.  Fergusson,  of  sending  for  you  so  often;  the  world 
outside  will  be  saying,  l  What,  does  that  old  fellow 
think  he  is  never  to  die  ? '  Dr.  Fergusson  did  his 
best,  but  in  vain.  In  a  short  time  Mr.  Grenville's 
valet  brought  him  his  medicine,  according  to  order  ; 
this  was  his  greeting,  '  Don't  bother  me  ; '  and  half 
an  hour  afterwards,  the  old  philosopher  died  quietly 
in  his  chair. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

House  in  Portugal  Street — Defalcation  at  the  Custom  House — Death 
of  Prince  Albert — Afghan  War — Repeal  of  Corn  laws — Pamphlet 
on  Marriage  with  a  Deceased  Wife's  Sister. 

UNTIL  I  was  installed  in  my  new  office,  I  lived  for 
a  season  or  two  at  Mr.  "Wynn's  house  in  Grafton 
Street,  but  I  soon  had  to  transfer  myself  to  No.  1 
Portugal  Street,  where  I  remained  for  several  years. 
The  choice  of  this  residence  was  not  a  very  fortunate 
one.  My  excellent  friend  Baron  Parke  set  himself  to 
alter  the  established  law  about  certain  leasehold  co- 
venants, and  the  alteration  operated  to  my  disad- 
vantage. I  had  undertaken  to  keep  the  premises  in ' 
good  repair,  but  under  the  old  system  a  distinction 
was  drawn  between  landlord's  repairs  and  tenant's 
repairs,  and  you  were  not  supposed  to  promise  more 
than  this,  that  you  would  maintain  your  house  in  as 
complete  a  state  of  repair  as  you  received  it,  some 
reasonable  allowance  being  made  for  the  inevitable 
action  of  time.  The  Baron,  however,  became  all  at 
once  inflexibly  logical,  and  decided  a  case  of  the  kind 
brought  before  him  as  if  he  had  been  a  Seraphic 
Doctor  among  the  mediaeval  Schoolmen.  '  Good  re- 
pair,' he  said, { is  good  repair  j  it  neither  is  nor  can  be 


294  CUSTOM  HOUSE  DEFALCATION 

anything  else.'  From  that  dictum  he  deduced  his  con- 
clusion, that  people  like  me,  who  had  entered  into 
such  a  contract,  were  bound  to  keep  their  houses  in  a 
state  of  brand-newness  and  absolute  perfection  till  the 
day  of  judgment  at  least,  if  the  lease  lasted  as  long. 
Lord  Westminster's  agents  were  not  slow  to  make  use 
of  this  decision,  and  I  had  to  pay  about  two  hundred 
pounds,  only  due  from  me  because  precedents  of  long 
standing  were  thus  suddenly  turned  upside  down. 
Another  blow  of  the  same  sort  also  fell  upon  me. 
Shortly  after  I  had  taken  my  seat  in  Thames  Street ;  a 
clerk,  for  whom  I  was  technically  responsible,  went 
off,  leaving  behind  him  a  defalcation  of  two  hundred 
and  seventy  pounds ;  this  sum  I  had  to  make  good 
without  a  moment's  delay,  but  I  accompanied  the 
payment  with  a  memorial  tending  to  prove,  that  the 
embezzlement  must  have  taken  place  during  the 
interval  between  the  death  of  my  predecessor,  Sir 
William  Boothby,  and  my  own  appointment.  The 
Treasury  officials,  who  on  this  occasion  behaved  with 
great  generosity  (for  their  legal  right  to  throw  the 
loss  upon  my  shoulders  was  indisputable),  accepted 
these  arguments  without  making  any  cavil,  and  re- 
funded the  money  in  a  week  or  two. 

The  manner  in  which  the  absconding  culprit  had 
effected  his  malversations  was  ingenious  and  original 
enough.  The  office  accounts  were  made  up  daily  at 
three  o'clock,  but  the  merchants  still  kept  paying  cus- 
toms duties  over  the  counter  until  four.  The  collec- 
tions of  the  last  hour  were  deposited  in  private  boxes 


WEAK  POINT  IN  THE  BANK  SYSTEM  295 

belonging  to  the  different  clerks  ;  these  boxes  were 
then  locked  up,  each  by  its  owner,  and  handed  over 
to  the  Assistant  Receiver -General  every  afternoon. 
This  delivery  was  accompanied  by  a  memorandum 
enumerating  the  various  bank-notes,  sovereigns,  half- 
sovereigns,  half-crowns,  shillings,  &c.  The  first  thing 
to  be  done  in  the  morning,  according  to  theory  at  any 
rate,  was  to  compare  these  memorandums  with  the 
contents  of  the  several  boxes,  and  verify  the  accounts. 
To  make  a  long  story  short,  the  defaulter  contrived  to 
hoodwink  a  sleepy  old  superior,  and  by  great  alertness 
and  activity  was  able  to  present  the  first-fruits  of 
the  morning,  so  as  to  represent  the  defalcations  of  the 
evening  before.  The  sleepy  old  superior,  fortunately 
for  me,  was  taken  ill,  and  the  gentleman  who  took  his 
place  for  the  moment  proved  to  be  much  more  in- 
telligent and  awake,  for  he  turned  sharply  round 
upon  the  guilty  person,  and  said,  l  Lambert,  you 
never  can  have  taken  all  these  new  coins  across  the 
counter  ;  you  must  have  been  to  the  Bank,  sir,  this 
very  morning,  to  fetch  them/  The  detected  one  darted 
out  of  the  room  and  ran  away  at  once,  but  was  soon 
caught,  tried,  and  condemned.  The  only  other  time 
when  I  was  called  upon  to  restore  to  the  Treasury 
money  lost,  struck  me  as  a  very  remarkable  occur- 
rence— an  occurrence,  I  may  add,  showing  great  want 
of  foresight  on  the  part  of  the  Bank  of  England. 
Whilst  every  other  note  was  guaranteed  by  a  separate 
signature,  the  twenty  and  fifty-pound  notes  were 
signed  by  the  same  person.  A  clerk  on  his  way  back 
20 


296  COOKED-UP  FIFTY-POUND  NOTE 

through  the  city  to  Threadneedle  Street,  with  a 
quantity  of  cancelled  Bank  paper,  had  his  pocket 
picked  (so  he  said  at  least),  and  shortly  afterwards  a 
certain  number  of  sham  fifty-pound  notes — sham, 
though  every  part  of  them  was  real — crept  into  circu- 
lation. It  was  clear  that  the  thief  either  knew,  or  dis- 
covered, or  was  told  by  some  third  person  of  this  acci- 
dental oversight  on  the  part  of  the  Bank  directors,  for 
he  destroyed  a  certain  number  of  good  twenty-pound 
notes,  and  attached  parts  of  them  to  the  notes  he  had 
stolen,  thus  reconstituting  them  well  enough  to  deceive 
even  experts.  Such  a  note  was  presented  at  my  office. 
There  seemed  nothing  suspicious  about  it,  and  it  was 
accepted  immediately,  accepted  not  only  by  my  sub- 
ordinate, a  perfectly  competent  judge,  but  by  the  Bank 
clerks  who  came  down  to  receive  the  day's  income, 
and  again  within  the  doors  of  the  Bank  itself.  It 
was  not  until  two  or  three  days  afterwards,  that  the 
fraud,  it  could  hardly  be  called  a  forgery,  was  de- 
tected. The  directors  required  me  to  pay  the  money 
over  again,  but  I  resisted  the  demand  on  several 
grounds ;  the  principal  ones  being,  first  of  all,  that 
wHen  a  recognised  official  person  undertakes  to  cancel 
a  bank-note,  he  should  cancel  it  effectually;  secondly, 
that  when  such  a  robbery  takes  place,  notice  of  the 
fact  and  of  the  numbers  of  the  notes  that  have  dis- 
appeared should  be  given  at  a  great  public  office  like 
mine ;  thirdly,  that  as  the  Bank  recognised  the 
necessity  of  different  signatures  to  notes  of  different 
value,  their  abandonment  of  this  rule,  in  the  case  of 


PUBLIC  AFFAIRS  297 

the  twenties  and  fifties,  was  an  act  of  laches  on  their 
part,  and  for  this,  they,  not  I,  ought  to  be  held  re- 
sponsible. Roundell  Palmer,  then  Attorney-General, 
decided  against  me,  and  as  it  did  not  matter,  seeing 
that  I  recovered  the  money  without  difficulty  from 
the  merchant  who  paid  it  in,  I  submitted  to  his 
decision.  The  loss,  I  believe,  fell  eventually  upon  a 
bank  at  Nottingham.  I  can  only  say  that  if  I  had 
been  a  member  of  that  firm,  I  should  have  fought  the 
matter  out  to  the  end,  as  I  think  no  jury  would  have 
endorsed  Palmer's  opinion. 

The  principal  historical  events  between  the  first 
Reform  Bill  and  my  becoming  Receiver- General  of 
Customs  were  first  the  marriage  of  the  Queen  with 
Prince  Albert ;  the  Afghan  war,  and  the  Repeal  of 
the  Corn  Laws.  Affairs  in  Afghanistan  were  terribly 
mismanaged.  The  remoteness  of  India,  practically 
greater  then  than  now,  and  the  fact  that  the  people 
who  understand,  and  take  an  interest  in  the  working  of 
our  imperial  system,  must  always  be  comparatively 
few,  tend  to  subordinate  important  questions  abroad 
to  trumpery  questions  at  home.  We  worry  ourselves 
about  Household  Suffrage  and  the  like,  and  let  the 
gravest  dangers  threaten  us  from  abroad,  with  short- 
sighted indifference.  As  to  Prince  Albert,  his  pre- 
mature death  was  perhaps,  among  many  such  calami- 
ties,  the  greatest  calamity  of  its  kind  that  has  befallen 
England  of  late  years.  In  spite  of  his  noble  character 
and  devotion  to  duty,  he  may  not  have  been  as  popu- 
lar during  his  lifetime  as  he  deserved  to  be,  but  every 


298         PRINCE  ALBERT  IN  LITE  AND  DEATH 

ensuing  year  and  month  of  these  critical  times  brings 
home  to  us  more  strongly  the  truth  of  Shakspeare's 
lines  in  '  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,' 

The  good  we  have  we  prize  not  to  its  worth. 

The  most  terrible  part  of  the  Corn  Law  Repeal  was 
its  immediate  cause,  the  potato  rot  in  Ireland.  Now 
whatever  may  have  been  Ireland's  ill-treatment  by 
England,  it  was  hardly  our  fault  that  the  Southern 
Irishman  lived  almost  entirely  upon  that  particular 
vegetable,  instead  of  upon  oatmeal  like  the  Scotch 
Irishman  of  the  North,  or  the  Scotchman  himself ; 
and  certainly,  when  this  unexpected  and  irretrievable 
disaster  fell  upon  that  unhappy  country,  England 
was  not  wanting  in  strenuous  efforts  to  meet  and 
mitigate  the  evil.  But  alas,  it  is  what  we  do  against 
Ireland  that  takes  root  in  the  Irish  heart,  what  we 
do  for  her  is  always  forgotten.  I  would  add,  without 
attempting  to  vindicate  all  the  proceedings  of  the 
English  people,  particularly  our  greedy  suppression 
of  Irish  trade,  there  is  a  certain  fallacy  underlying 
many  of  these  Irish  complaints.  They  compare  our 
harshness  two  hundred  years  ago  with  the  gentle- 
ness, perhaps  the  somewhat  effeminate  gentleness, 
of  modern  manners  and  modern  habits  of  thought. 
This  is  hardly  fair ;  law  and  life  a  hundred  and  fifty 
or  two  hundred  years  ago  were  fiercer  and  more  ruth- 
less everywhere  than  now.  No  crime  committed  by 
England  against  Ireland  equalled  in  hard  and  callous 
cruelty  Louis  XIV.'s  devastation  of  the  Palatinate, 


ANCIENT  LAWS  AND  LAWLESSNESS  299 

or,  to  come  nearer  home,  William  IIL's  massacre  of 
Glencoe.  Yet  the  inhabitants  of  Baden,  and  the  Mac- 
donalds  of  the  West  Coast,  do  not  now  trouble  them- 
selves to  look  back  so  far.  The  grands-jours 
d'Auvergne,  the  State  and  other  trials  here  and  else- 
where, the  local  tyrannies  in  the  more  distant  parts 
of  England  and  Scotland,  when,  as  the  Highlander 
phrased  it,  '  the  law  had  not  yet  come  to  Tain,'  all 
tend  to  prove  that  in  remote  provinces,  whether  of 
England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  or  France,  lawless  ferocity 
and  merciless  law  were  alternately  in  the  ascendent ; 
that  oppressions  in  Ireland  had  many  parallels  all  over 
the  world.  And  taking  these  matters  into  considera- 
tion, I  think  it  a  great  misfortune  that  O'Connell 
deliberately  set  himself  to  kindle  afresh  the  hatred 
between  Celt  and  Saxon,  which,  as  Mr.  McCarthy  in 
his  History  admits,  had  almost  worn  itself  out.  My 
own  namesake,  and  remote  kinsman,  as  I  believe, 
always  acted  in  a  very  different  spirit.  No  one 
could  doubt  the  ardour  of  Bishop  Doyle's  Irish 
patriotism,  but  it  was  ever  guided  in  its  course  by 
far-seeing  wisdom,  and  a  thorough  sense  of  Christian 
duty.  It  is  also  clear  to  everybody  who  has  eyes  to  see, 
that  at  present  we  throw  open  with  hearty  liberality 
all  the  advantages  of  our  great  Empire  to  any  Irish- 
men, and  their  name  is  legion,  who  choose  to  profit 
by  them.  One  of  the  results  of  this  is,  that  owing  hi 
some  degree  to  then*  superior  quickness  of  parts,  in 
some  degree  also  to  other  reasons  too  long  to  enume- 
rate, the  Civil  Service  ranks  are  filled  with  Irish 


300  CIVIL  SERVICE 

recruits.  In  most  of  the  appointed  competitions,  they 
beat  both  Englishmen  and  Scotchmen  hollow.  Now 
if  their  hatred  of  England  is  to  burn  on  with  a 
quenchless  flame,  they  should  not,  I  think,  accept 
our  gifts,  or  pocket  our  money.  The  Afghan  war, 
though  its  losses  were  repaired,  and  English  ascend- 
ency re-established  within  the  next  year  or  two,  had 
a  bad  effect  upon  the  stability  of  our  Indian  Empire. 
It  taught  the  Eastern  races  that  soldiers  are  not  invin- 
cible because  they  happen  to  be  dressed  in  red,  and  it 
was  succeeded  by  many  evils,  of  which,  I  fear,  we  have 
not  seen  the  last.  The  two  Sikh  wars,  in  1846  and 
1847,  followed  close  upon  this  Afghan  war,  and  it 
really  seemed  as  if  our  rule  in  India  was  shaken  to 
its  foundation  ;  we  struggled  through  them,  however, 
and  I  hope  and  believe  that  the  Sikhs  are  now  among 
the  most  loyal  of  our  subjects.  They  are  not  fettered 
by  caste  restrictions,  being  neither  Hindoos  nor 
Mahomedans,  and  are,  if  not  Christians,  at  any  rate 
'  eaters  of  beef,'  so  that  we  have  more  in  common  with 
them  than  with  the  natives  of  India  proper. 

Upon  me,  one  of  the  queer  effects  of  the  Sikh 
war  was,  that  it  caused  me  to  write  a  pamphlet  upon 
quite  a  different  subject — at  Jim  Wortley's  request. 
There  came  a  most  alarming  message  from  the 
Governor- General,  that  after  a  desperate  battle  in 
which,  if  we  gained  the  victory,  it  was  all  that  we 
did,  another  hostile  army  had  shown  itself  on  the 
flank  of  our  exhausted  force.  The  report  ended 
with  these  words,  and  there  being  then  no  electric 


SIKII  WAR— PAMPHLET  CAUSED  BY  IT         301 

telegraph,  we  had  to  wait  in  the  bitterest  anxiety 
before  we  could  learn  how  this  new  hostile  onset  had 
been  met.  My  nerves  gave  way,  and  I  could  not 
sleep.  '  What  you  have  to  do,'  said  Jim  Wortley, 
*  is  to  divert  your  mind  by  some  absorbing  occupa- 
tion. We  want  very  much  a,  pamphlet  in  favour  of 
my  Bill — the  Bill  I  mean  to  permit  marriage  with  a 
deceased  wife's  sister.  Why  not  sit  down  and  write  it 
for  us  ?  We  are  in  a  great  hurry,  so  you  must  set 
to  work  without  a  moment's  delay.'  I  agreed,  and 
my  pamphlet,  if  it  did  not  convince  the  Bench  of 
Bishops,  produced  upon  me  the  effect  I  hoped  for. 

On  looking  back  upon  the  question,  I  cannot  but 
think  that  it  turns  very  much  upon  the  truth  of  a 
statement  put  forward  by  its  adversaries  ;  the  state- 
ment, I  mean,  that  our  lower  classes  take  no  interest 
in,  and  are  not  affected  by  the  operation  of  this  law. 
I  frankly  own  that  such  an  assertion  fills  me  with 
surprise.  The  first  great  advocate  for  removing 
this  particular  restriction  upon  marriage  was  Lord 
Francis  Egerton,  afterwards  Lord  Ellesmere,  a 
wealthy  and  powerful  magnate  of  Lancashire,  devoted 
to  the  interests  of  Lancashire  men  and  women,  and 
so  beloved  by  them,  that  when  a  formidable  Chartist 
riot  was  impending,  all  his  miners  and  colliers 
gathered  in  a  body  round  the  house  where  he  lived, 
crying  out  with  one  voice,  '  We  are  ready  to  die,  if 
need  be,  for  our  noble  Lord  and  Lady.'  His  reason 
for  urging  the  measure  on  was,  that  all  through  his 
manufacturing  districts,  the  mill  hands  and  artisans, 


302  LORD  ELLESMERE— JIM  WORTLEY 

either  from  ignorance  of  the  law,  or  in  defiance  of  it, 
had  fallen  into  great  irregularity  of  life,  and  that 
serious  evils  prevailed  among  them  in  consequence  of 
this  needless  prohibition.  Jim  Wortley,  a  leader  on 
the  Northern  Circuit,  a  member  of  a  family  holding 
much  the  same  position  in  Yorkshire  as  the  Egertons 
held  in  Lancashire,  took  the  Bill  up  when  Lord 
Francis  became  a  peer,  and  advocated  it  on  the  same 
grounds.  I  do  not  see  how  they  could  have  been 
mistaken,  but  if  they  were,  I  own  that  my  zeal  in 
behalf  of  the  measure,  which  even  now  is  not  extreme, 
would  to  a  great  extent  fade  away.  The  sexual 
relations  all  over  .the  world  are  so  ticklish  and 
critical,  and  the  general  tone  of  morality  depends  so 
much  upon  them,  that  to  relax  any  existing  system, 
for  the  sake  of  trifling  improvements  in  its  organisa- 
tion is  not  unlikely  to  do  more  harm  than  good.  If 
a  few  rich  men  who  have  fallen  in  love  with  their 
sisters-in-law  (this  I  cannot  but  observe  happens 
occasionally,  whether  the  wife  is  alive  or  dead)  are 
the  only  persons  who  desire  this  change,  let  them  go 
and  live  in  Germany  or  in  the  colonies,  or  in  any 
other  place  where  such  alliances  are  legal.  At  the 
same  time,  if  I  could  be  induced  to  work  hard  in  their 
cause,  it  would  be  because  I  am  irritated  by  the  non- 
sense which  their  antagonists  talk.  We  have  the  Old 
Testament  paraded  before  us,  as  if  we  were  bound 
to  accept  the  views  entertained  by  semi-barbarous 
polygamists  three  thousand  years  ago,  even  sup- 
posing that  they  then  objected  to  such  marriages, 


INCONCLUSIVE  ARGUMENTS  303 

which  they  did  not.  Do  you  derive  the  chosen  people 
from  Abraham  ?  Then  you  derive  them  from  a  man 
who  married  his  own  sister  without  any  criticisms 
from  Moses  or  the  prophets.  Do  you  derive  it 
from  Jacob  ?  Well,  he  married  two  sisters  at  once, 
and  neither  man  nor  God  made  any  objection.  It  is 
obvious,  also,  from  the  relations  imposed  upon 
brethren  with  regard  to  their  brother's  widow,  from 
the  marriage  of  nieces  with  their  uncles  and  the  like, 
that  the  main  object  of  Jewish  marriages  was  to 
keep  the  family  property  together,  and  that  in  com- 
parison to  that  they  thought  little  of  entering  into 
engagements,  which  our  English  High  Church  divines 
may  look  upon  as  incestuous. 

Again,  the  great  Jew  who  made  the  name  of  his 
people  known  all  over  the  world,  and  who  still  stands 
out  as  the  type  of  his  race,  surrounded  himself  with 
seven  hundred  wives  and  three  hundred  concubines. 
I  can  hardly  suppose  that  he  troubled  himself  much 
with  any  nice  inquiry  into  the  degrees  of  affinity  sub- 
sisting between  the  different  members  of  this  conjugal 
mob,  unless  indeed  the  rattling  controversialist  of  the 
'  Saturday  Review '  should  maintain,  that  these  three 
hundred  concubines  were  all  deceased  wives'  sisters, 
whom  Solomon  would  have  led  to  the  altar,  had  he  not 
been  prevented  by  his  determination  to  adhere,  in  every 
respect,  to  the  letter  of  the  law.  Again,  this  Mosaic 
law  is  not  dead,  but  alive,  and  if  you  ask  any  Hebrew 
gentleman,  who  may  be  considered  as  an  expert  spe- 
cially qualified  to  pronounce  an  opinion  thereon,  he 


304  TEN  PER  CENT. 

laughs  at  the  idea  of  its  containing  any  such  prohibi- 
tion, though  he  generally  adds,  '  Of  course  we  accept 
the  rule  of  the  country  in  which  we  are  domiciled, 
whilst  we  are  domiciled  there.'     Again,  though  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  may  tell  us  that  we  and 
our  wives'  sisters  are  one  flesh,  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  backed  by  the  common  sense  of  mankind, 
as  I  pointed  out  to  Lord  Houghton  many  years  ago, 
takes  quite  a  different  view,  and  in  the  event  of  your 
sister-in-law  leaving  you  a  legacy,  quietly  announces 
that  you  are  strangers  in  blood,  and  exacts  his  ten 
per  cent.     The  social  argument  brought  forward  by 
English  divines  and  others  is  not  so  untenable  as  the 
scriptural  one,  but  it  rests  hi  a  great  degree  on  imagi- 
nary foundations.     With  anyone  who  contends  that 
an  attractive  girl,  in  a  conspicuous  worldly  position, 
can  go  and  keep  house  for  an  agreeable  young  brother- 
in-law,  without  exciting    unpleasant   remarks,    and 
risking  her  reputation,  it  is  useless  to  argue,  and  yet, 
it  is   mainly   to   secure  for  women  this  impossible 
position,  that  the  present  arrangements,  according  to 
our  bishops  and  curates,  have  to  be  guarded  against 
attack.     Upon  the  whole  I  adhere  to  what  I  said 
above.  If  Mr.  Beresford  Hope  and  his  allies  can  prove, 
as  they  say  they  can,  that  the  late  Lord  Ellesmere 
and  James  "VYortley  were  totally  mistaken  in  their 
belief,  and  the  removal  of  this  restriction  is   of  no 
vital  importance  to  our  manufacturing  population,  a 
mild  sympathy  is  all  that  I  can  give  to  the  opponents 
of  the  law.    I  have  no  great  tenderness  for  what  Miss 


LORD  PLUM-CAKE—LEAH  AND  RACHEL         305 

Edge  worth  somewhere  calls  'the  sorrows  of  my  Lord 
Plum-cake/  and  if  his  lordship  finds  life  intolerable 
without  turning  his  sister-in-law  into  a  new  wife,  he 
can  take  himself  off  and  marry  her  elsewhere  ;  but  on 
the  other  hand,  if  Lord  Ellesmere  and  James  Wortley 
were  not  mistaken,  I  think  the  reasons  for  cancelling 
this  somewhat  arbitrary  edict  are  stronger  than  those 
for  maintaining  it.  Indeed,  to  my  mind,  even  the 
prohibition  of  marriage  with  two  sisters  at  once  was 
not  suggested  to  the  Jews  by  any  moral  feeling;  how 
could  it  be,  when  under  the  same  law  a  man  was  not 
only  allowed,  but  obliged  to  marry  his  brother's 
widow  ?  What  brought  that  article  into  the  Hebrew 
code  was,  I  believe,  a  national  tradition  concerning 
the  quarrels  between  Leah  and  Rachel,  which  cast  a 
shadow  on  all  such  marriages,  though  not  in  them- 
selves worse  than  other  polygamous  contracts ;  this, 
however,  is  a  mere  matter  of  opinion,  and  no  doubt 
would  be  boisterously  contradicted  by  the  writer  in 
the  *  Saturday  Review '  and  his  clerical  friends.  So 
much  for  my  pamphlet,  which  successfully  put  me, 
and,  I  daresay  other  people,  to  sleep,  and  is  now 
itself  at  rest  for  ever.  The  only  other  word  I  have  to 
say  is  this,  that  some  casual  inquiries  I  have  made 
do  not  confirm  the  Saturday  Reviewer's  assumption, 
that  among  Roman  Catholics  there  is  any  particular 
difficulty  in  obtaining  dispensation  for  cases  of  this 
nature  ;  on  the  contrary,  I  am  told  that  the  Church  is 
less  disposed  to  withdraw  the  barrier  that  separates 
blood  relations,  such  as  first  cousins,  than  when  the 


306  ALIWAL  AND  SOBRAON 

ecclesiastical  prohibitions  are  imposed  on  account  of 
affinity.  If  I  am  rightly  informed,  then,  England, 
without  her  colonies,  is  almost  the  only  Christian 
country  in  the  world,  where  a  man  may  not  marry  his 
deceased  wife's  sister,  and  this  gives  even  my  Lord 
Plum-cake  some  right  to  grumble. 

In  the  meantime,  the  Sikh  war  went  on,  and 
those  who  are  not  too  young  will  recollect  how  the 
countless  dusky  corpses  floated  down  the  river,  be- 
tween the  two  main  armies  pitted  against  each  other  at 
Sobraon,  thus  bringing  news  more  vividly  than  any 
post  or  telegraph  could  do,  of  the  fierce  battle  at 
Aliwal,  and  the  bloody  defeat  of  the  Sikh  invaders. 
This  battle  of  Aliwal  was  followed  by  that  of 
Sobraon,  and  the  first  war  came  to  an  end.  At  the 
close  of  the  second  struggle,  the  Punjaub,  as  everyone 
knows,  was  annexed,  and  Dhuleep  Singh,  who,  as  a 
boy,  had  succeeded,  in  name  at  least,  to  his  father 
Uunjeet  Singh  as  lord  of  that  country,  was  deposed 
and  brought  over  here.  His  Koh-i-noor  also  became 
one  of  the  English  crown  jewels.  I  never  quite  un- 
derstood the  logic  of  that  confiscation,  and  it  may 
fairly  be  said,  I  think,  to  have  imported  into  England 
the  ill-luck,  with  which  it  has  always  been  connected, 
according  to  an  Indian  superstition. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

Henry  Cheney  and  his  brother  Edward — Italian  sermon  referred  to — 
Impossible  to  report — Divorces  in  Poland — Tenth  of  April — Sedi- 
tious movements  in  Germany  and  elsewhere — Death  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel — International  Exhibition  of  1851 — Death  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington — Crimean  war — Indian  mutiny — Zulu  war. 

ONE  of  the  friends  whom  I  made  about  this  time 
was  Henry  Cheney,  a  very  brilliant,  though  some- 
what disappointed  man.  The  childless  owner  of  a 
large  estate  entailed  upon  the  Cheneys  kept  death  at 
bay,  in  the  most  inconsiderate  manner.  Henry,  the 
immediate  heir,  waited  and  put  off  grappling  with 
English  life  month  after  month,  and  year  after  year, 
until,  when  at  length  he  found  himself  the  squire, 
the  time  was  gone  by,  and  he  could  not  do  himself 
full  justice.  He  was  something  in  the  position  of 
a  grand  three-year-old,  whose  proprietor  has  over- 
looked the  entrance  day  for  the  Derby  and  St.  Leger, 
and  therefore  he  had  to  content  himself  with  minor 
successes.  As  one  of  the  best  amateur  painters 
of  his  day,  he  had  spent  the  greater  portion  of  his 
youth  in  Italy,  so  also  had  his  brother  Edward, 
whom  perhaps  my  readers  will  recollect  as  figuring  in 
Lockhart's  'Life  of  Scott.'  He  pointed  out,  they  will 
remember,  to  Sir  Walter,  when  he  grumbled  at  Dante's 


308  MICHAEL  SCOTT  AND  DANTE 

exclusiveness  in  hell,  *  as  if  nobody  born  north  of  the 
Alps  were  worth  damning  at  all/  that  he  at  least  had 
no  right  to  complain,  since  his  own  ancestor,  Michael 
Scott,  was  getting  it  as  hot  as  '  the  best  or  worst  of 
them '  in  the  great  poet's  Inferno.  Henry  Cheney's 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  language,  the  litera- 
ture, and  the  habits  of  Italy  made  him  a  very  inte- 
resting companion.  I  recollect  one  day  his  repeating 
to  me,  word  for  word  I  believe,  a  most  peculiar 
sermon  heard  by  himself  at  the  Lent  preachings  in 
Eome.  I  happened  to  say  '  I  think  it  rather  hard 
upon  the  Church  of  England,  that  the  Catholics  are 
always  contrasting  the  grand  ideas  of  their  faith  with 
our  humdrum  daily  practice  ;  Catholicism  has  her 
humdrum  daily  practice  too,  I  suppose.'  He  assented 
at  once,  and  remarked,  'if  -the  Protestants  knew 
some  of  the  details  of  the  papal  system  as  I  know  them, 
they  would  be  startled,  and  that  not  a  little.'  There- 
upon he  went  on  to  tell  me  that  when  the  seasons  for 
preaching  come  round,  two  classes  of  priests  were 
selected  to  do  that  work.  The  first  class  consisted 
of  learned,  able,  and  eloquent  divines,  whose  dis- 
courses were  at  least  as  powerful  and  instructive  as 
any  Protestant  discourses  could  be.  '  But  besides 
them,'  he  proceeded  to  say,  '  a  set  of  monkish  hu- 
mourists are  called  upon  to  amuse,  and  to  excite  the 
imagination  of  the  common  people,  and  in  order  to 
accomplish  their  object,  these  clerical  mountebanks 
stick  at  nothing.'  Now  I  admire  many  things,  and 
many  persons  belonging  to  the  Roman  Catholic 


SUPPRESSED  SERMON  309 

Church,  but  not  everything  or  everybody  j  and  I 
think  it  would  be  well  if  those  Protestants  who  are 
dazzled  by  the  glorious  outward  aspect  of  Rome, 
in  her  universality  and  invincibility,  knew  a  little  of 
what  was  going  on  behind  the  scenes.  I  therefore 
had  intended  to  reproduce  a  buffo  sermon  recited  to 
me,  among  other  things  of  the  same  kind,  by  Henry 
Cheney  forty  years  ago.  But  the  sermon  in  question 
is  so  full  of  blasphemous  impiety  that  competent 
advisers  interfered,  and  told  me  it  really  must  not 
be  published.  '  If  it  were  published,'  they  said, 
*  it  would  shock  so  many  excellent  people  that  the 
effect  might  be  disastrous.'  I  myself  believe  that 
such  matters  should  be  made  known,  but,  upon  the 
whole,  I  thought  it  safer  to  give  way  to  the  critics 
who  kindly  tendered  me  their  advice.  And  there- 
fore this  wonderful  piece  of  ecclesiastical  oratory 
(and  I  may  say  I  never  met  with  anything  the 
least  like  it)  has  been  suppressed.  But  for  it,  I 
should  hardly  have  brought  Henry  Cheney  into  this 
volume.  We  were  intimate  friends  no  doubt,  but  our 
intercourse  was  of  the  most  ordinary  kind,  without 
bearing  in  any  way  upon  the  special  reminiscences 
of  my  life,  with  the  exception  of  his  Italian  tales.  He 
was  a  delightful  talker,  and  played  brilliantly  both  at 
whist  and  chess.  He  might  also,  I  have  little  doubt, 
have  done  a  good  deal  in  literature,  had  he  chosen  to 
give  up  his  mind  to  it,  but  he  merely  wrote,  whenever 
he  did  write,  for  his  own  amusement.  His  best  poem 
was  a  playful  satire,  reminding  one  perhaps  a  little  too 


310  DIVORCE  IN  POLAND 

much  of  Lord  Byron's  '  Beppo.'  But  a  short  prose 
story,  privately  printed  after  his  death,  possessed,  I 
think,  higher  qualities.  It  was  composed  to  illustrate 
the  Italian  belief  in  that  ancient  superstition,  inherited 
by  them  from  the  Romans,  about  the  evil  eye.  Henry 
Cheney's  wonderfully  accurate  knowledge  of  all  the 
lights  and  shadows  that  play  round  Italian  life  enabled 
him  to  give  his  descriptions  a  reality  and  local  colour, 
such,  as  I  fancy,  no  other  Englishman  could  have  done ; 
he  also  contrived  to  infuse  into  the  tale,  very  impres- 
sively, a  supernatural  element,  in  the  manner  which 
I  think  most  effective — the  manner,  I  mean,  which 
allows  a  reader  to  believe  as  much  as  he  likes,  through 
the  nerves  of  his  imagination  without  bringing  his 
reason  to  bear  upon  the  question  at  all.  Such  delicate 
hints  and  suggestions  show  an  artist's  hand  a  great 
deal  more  than  the  blunt  straightforward  ghost  at 
present  in  fashion,  whom  you  may  not  hesitate  about, 
but  must  accept  or  reject  at  once.  I  have  thought  it 
right  to  say  thus  much  about  Henry  Cheney,  as  he 
has  not  been  allowed  to  preach  his  sermon.  Though 
indeed  so  many  eminent  divines,  from  the  bishop  to 
the  curate,  have  been  requested  by  admiring  friends 
to  publish  their  sermons,  that  the  request  not  to 
publish  his  discourse  causes  him,  I  think,  to  stand 
alone,  or  almost  alone,  among  these  reverend  multi- 
tudes ;  reminding  us  more  or  less  how  Lord  Castle- 
reagh  stood  in  plain  clothes  among  the  ambassadors 
and  secretaries  who  all  of  them  blazed  with  stars, 
crosses,  and  orders  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna  ;  there- 


POLISH   CLERGY  INFLUENCED  BY  TRADITIONS   311 

by  eliciting  from  Prince  Metternich  the  well-known 
remark  :  *  C'est  distingue  c,a.' 

The  next  story  I  have  to  tell,  also  refers  to  a 
Catholic  practice,  and  in  the  original  manuscript 
followed  the  contraband  sermon,  as  naturally  as  a 
small  boat  follows  in  the  wake  of  its  ship,  but  the 
ship  having  been  confiscated,  the  boat  is  rather  adrift 
upon  the  waters  ;  however,  here  it  is  :  Divorce,  in 
the  Catholic  Church,  is  commonly  supposed  to  be  for- 
bidden, but  there  seems  to  have  been,  at  one  time, 
in  Poland  at  least,  a  modification  of  this  law  which 
must  have  operated  now  and  then  in  a  very  un- 
expected manner.  My  grandfather,  Welbore  Ellis 
Doyle  (spoken  of  hereafter),  I  suppose  between 
the  American  war  and  the  French  Revolutionary 
war,  filled  the  post  of  military  envoy  or  something 
of  the  sort,  at  Warsaw.  He  was  well  received  by  the 
Poles,  and  with  one  distinguished  family  lived  on 
most  intimate  terms.  A  daughter  of  the  house,  a 
great  favourite  of  his,  was  about  to  be  married,  when 
one  morning  she  appeared  before  him  with  a  very 
solemn  aspect,  holding  a  paper  in  her  hand.  '  I  have 
to  ask  you/  she  said,  '  my  dear  colonel,  to  take 
charge  of  this  document ;  it  is  my  formal  protest 
against  the  marriage  I  am  about  to  contract.'  '  Good 
heavens,  my  dear  child,7  he  cried  out, '  if  the  proposed 
alliance  is  so  odious  to  you,  do  let  me  intercede  with 
your  father  and  mother  ;  they  have  always  professed 
a  thorough  friendship  for  me,  and  perhaps  I  may  be 

able  to  persuade  them  not  to  insist  on  dragging  you 
21 


312  REVOLUTION  OF  1848 

to  the  altar  against  your  will.  '  Oh,  dear  me,'  was 
the  girl's  answer,  '  you  do  not  understand  the  matter 
at  all.  I  have  not  the  least  wish  to  break  off  my 
approaching  marriage,  only,  perhaps  ten  years  hence, 
Casimir,  or  Ludovic  (or  whatever  the  gentleman's 
name  might  be),  may  not  suit  me  as  well  as  he  does 
now,  and  if  I  can  point  out  that  I  protested  formally 
at  the  time  of  my  espousals,  I  shall  be  able  to  divorce 
him  and  go  my  own  way.'  Whether  the  young  lady 
was  accurate  in  her  view  of  the  Polish  ecclesiastical 
law,  and  what  ultimately  became  of  the  document  or 
of  the  bridegroom  I  never  heard.  There  are  of  course 
grave  objections  to  making  the  conjugal  tie  irre- 
trievably binding,  but  if  the  Polish  clergy  winked 
at  this  method  of  escaping  from  it,  it  shows  that  the 
authority  of  the  Church  of  Rome  there  was  unable  to 
triumph  absolutely  over  local  traditions  and  opinions. 
Perhaps  the  close  neighbourhood  of  the  Greek  Chris- 
tians rendered  the  Catholic  Bishops  more  pliable  to 
the  will  of  the  aristocracy  in  Poland,  than  elsewhere. 
In  the  year  1848  the  Revolution  of  France  drove 
Louis  Philippe  into  England  and  completely  upset  the 
dexterous  political  scheme,  by  which  he  had  hoped 
to  secure  the  throne  of  Spain  for  his  son,  the  Due  de 
Montpensier.  These  disturbances  on  the  Continent 
were  soon  followed  by  the  great  Chartist  demonstra- 
tion of  the  10th  of  April  in  London.  This  outbreak 
was  contemplated  with  much  alarm  by  many  sensible 
people.  It  was  apprehended  that  there  might  be  some 
intercommunion  between  the  Chartists  here,  and  the 


POSITION  OF  THE  ENGLISH  ABftOAD          313 

anarchists  abroad,  and  that  thousands  of  foreigners, 
more  accustomed  to  the  use  of  arms  than  our  undis- 
ciplined populace,  might  join  the  English  mobs,  and 
turn  the  so-called  demonstration  into  a  formidable 
revolt.  As  it  happened,  I  had  to  go  and  fetch  my 
wife  home  (she  had  been  spending  the  winter  at  Nice 
for  her  health).  Before  starting  I  went  down  to  the 
Treasury,  and  had  a  talk  with  the  parliamentary 
secretary  there.  I  told  him  that  if  he  looked  forward 
to  anything  like  a  real  outbreak,  I  should  feel  it  my  duty 
to  stay  till  the  danger  was  past  and  gone,  in  order  to 
take  my  place  amongst  the  special  constables  about  to 
be  enrolled  (they  included,  as  everyone  knows,  Louis 
Napoleon)  ;  but  the  secretary  treated  the  matter  very 
lightly,  and  said  it  would  be  perfectly  ridiculous  for 
me  to  put  off  my  journey  on  such  a  pretext.  He  was 
quite  right,  since,  as  everyone  knows,  the  demon- 
stration collapsed  entirely,  and  that  noble  army  of 
special  constables  paraded  the  town,  truncheons  in 
hand,  without  having  to  break  anybody's  head. 
Travelling  abroad  at  the  moment  was  somewhat  dis- 
agreeable. You  could  not  well  go  through  France, 
because  the  French  authorities  took  possession  of  any 
gold  you  might  have  about  you,  and  it  was  very  de- 
sirable to  have  a  certain  quantity  of  gold  ready  for 
use.  The  foreign  bankers  were  beginning  to  be  rather 
shy  of  their  English  customers,  and  if  April  10  had  not 
passed  off  so  innocuously,  they  would  certainly  have 
refused  to  cash  your  circular  notes,  or  to  attend  to  your 
letters  of  credit.  As  we  were  making -our  way  back 


314   ALANS— EECEPTION  OF  THE  NEWS  FROM  ENGLAND 

through  Savoy  and  Germany  down  to  the  Rhine,  the 
whole  country  was  in  a  great  state  of  fermentation, 
bodies  of  troops  stood  on  guard  at  each  railway 
station,  and  disquieting  rumours  flew  about  every- 
where like  birds  of  ill  omen.  We  fell  in  with  a  friend, 
an  elderly  gentleman,  who  was  returning  home  accom- 
panied by  three  pretty  daughters,  and  though  we  were 
all  a  little  anxious,  it  was  impossible  for  us,  daughters 
and  all,  to  help  laughing  at  his  particular  variety  of 
terror  ;  he  was  always  fancying  that  the  poet  Herweg, 
or  some  other  revolutionary  leader,  would  swoop 
down  upon  our  train  at  the  head  of  his  legions,  and 
carry  off  the  young  ladies  into  the  mountains,  there  to 
remain  as  captives  of  his  bow  and  spear.  After  pass- 
ing the  Alps,  we  halted  at  the  Savoy  inn — I  forget 
the  name  of  the  place — near  where  Horace  Walpole 
lost  his  favourite  dog  ;  the  reader  may  recollect  that 
he  put  him  out  for  a  run  along  the  road,  and  that  a 
wolf  jumping  out  of  the  bushes  snapped  him  up,  and 
carried  him  off  into  the  forest  so  rapidly,  that  all 
attempts  to  rescue  him  became  hopeless.  We  saw 
sauntering  about  the  village  some  magnificent  wolf- 
hounds, who  were  very  much  in  their  proper  place. 
For  the  people  turned  them  out  among  their  Alpine 
sheep  during  the  winter,  to  protect  the  flocks,  in  collars 
armed  with  spikes  of  steel,  and  called  them  (which 
gave  the  dogs  an  additional  interest  in  our  eyes)  by 
the  old  mediaeval  name  of  Alans.1  It  may  not  be 

1  'King  Richard    has  not    an  Alan  like  him.'— Walter   Scott's 
Talisman. 


DEATH  OF  SIR  R.  PEEL  AND  SERVICE  FRANCHISE   315 

amiss  to  add,  as  a  less  sentimental,  but  perhaps  more 
valuable  recollection  of  that  part  of  the  world,  that 
although  the  wine  infallibly  sets  your  teeth  on  edge, 
the  beer,  dark-coloured  like  our  porter,  was  ex- 
cellent. 

The  Americans  behaved  with  respect  to  the  10th 
of  April  in  a  thoroughly  American  fashion.  Their 
commercial  interests  were,  of  course,  liable  to  be  very 
greatly  affected  by  any  English  convulsions,  and  they 
did  not  like  the  look  of  things.  Accordingly,  the  first 
man  who  landed  with  a  newspaper  of  the  llth  in  his 
hand  was  carried  off,  and  lifted  into  a  conspicuous 
position  above  the  heads  of  an  anxious  crowd.  '  Read 
out,  read  out,'  was  the  general  cry.  The  traveller 
began  to  deliver  his  formal  account  from  the  '  Times,' 
when  he  was  interrupted  by  an  universal  shout,  '  Oh, 
bother  all  that,  what  are  the  funds  ?  '  '  92f '  or  just 
what  the  case  might  be,  was  the  answer  given.  '  That's 
enough,  thank  you,'  rose  up  on  all  sides,  and  the  as- 
sembly dissolved  itself  like  '  les  neiges  d'antan.'  The 
acute  Yankees  learned  the  general  result  from  these 
figures,  and  could  afford,  as  practical  men,  to  wait  for 
details  till  they  were  completely  at  leisure. 

Of  the  next  years  I  have  little  or  nothing  to  say 
of  my  own,  though  many  things  of  great  importance 
happened.  Among  other  sad  events  the  death  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  a  heavy  blow  to  all  his  countrymen, 
but  a  civil  servant  trudging  down  to  his  business, 
morning  after  morning,  and  debarred  from  taking 
any  active  interest  in  practical  politics,  because  he 


316  ENGLAND'S  LOSSES 

has  no  vote  and  is  forbidden  to  put  himself  forward 
in  public  matters,  has  perhaps  less  to  do  with  histo- 
rical events  than  most  other  men.  The  case  is  dif- 
ferent now,  but  the  parliamentary  division  which 
gave  civil  servants  the  franchise  (both  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  Mr.  Disraeli  being  opposed  to  the  change),  was  a 
stolen  one.  I  recollect  asking  Mr.  Gladstone,  shortly 
before  one  of  the  various  Reform  Bills  was  introduced, 
this  question — 'I  say,  among  other  roughs,  are  you 
going  to  let  me  have  a  vote  now  ?  '  I  was  joking, 
but  he  answered  with  more  heat  and  earnestness  than 
I  expected, '  Never  until  universal  suffrage  is  reached, 
never,  with  my  consent,  shall  a  civil  servant  go  to 
the  poll.'  I  thought  him  perfectly  right ;  the 
English  Civil  Service  is  of  the  highest  value  to  the 
country,  mainly  because  its  members  are  bound  to 
assist  all  Governments  alike  in  the  daily  working  of 
the  British  constitution,  without  having,  or  at  any 
rate  showing,  the  slightest  preference  for  one  set  of 
ministers  over  another.  Still  I  hope  that  no  great 
practical  harm  has  been  done  by  the  introduction  of 
this  new  element  into  our  public  offices,  inasmuch 
as  the  new  privilege  has  been  exercised,  under  proper 
guidance,  with  tact  and  discretion.  As  to  politics 
on  a  larger  scale,  where  the  great  interests  of  the 
country  are  concerned,  and  you  are  not  acting  as  a 
partisan  but  as  an  Englishman,  I  see  no  reason 
why,  though  an  exciseman  or  employed  in  the 
Custom  House,  you  should  not  think,  talk,  and  work 
as  seems  right  in  your  eyes.  Accordingly,  when  the 


HYDE  PARK  EXHIBITION  317 

Volunteer  movement  was  started,  I  tried  to  forward  it 
with  all  my  heart  ;  but  of  that  hereafter. 

Returning  to  Sir  Robert  Peel's  death,  I  can  only 
repeat  what  others  have  said,  and  said  better,  that  the 
shock  of  this  calamity  was  terrible  indeed,  and  further 
record  my  opinion  that  England  during  the  last  thirty 
or  forty  years  has  suffered  greatly  through  the  pre- 
mature deaths  of  many  of  her  best  and  ablest  sons. 
With  ordinary  good  luck,  Sir  Robert  reel,  Prince 
Albert,  Praed,  Macaulay,  George  Lewis,  Sidney 
Herbert,  Charles  Buller,  cum  multis  aliis,  might  all 
have  lived  longer,  and  done  good  service  to  our  common 
country.  Of  late  years  we  have  sadly  wanted  such 
men  to  influence,  control,  and  restrain  public  opinion ; 
wanted  them,  I  think,  more  than  at  most  other  periods 
of  our  history.  But  fate  has  been  against  us,  and  we 
must  make  the  most  of  those  who  remain,  or  have  since 
come  to  the  front.  But  though  great  men  leave  us 
the  world  goes  on,  and  in  1851,  in  spite  of  Peel's 
death,  all  England,  and  in  a  lesser  degree  all  foreign 
countries,  eagerly  supported  the  first  International 
Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park.  It  was  supposed,  I  do  not 
know  why,  to  be  a  harbinger  of  peace  and  goodwill 
among  men.  Up  to  the  present  era  certainly,  the 
spirit  of  commerce  has  not  been,  on  the  whole, 
a  pacific  spirit,  and  however  reasonable  the  rose- 
coloured  anticipations  of  statesmen  appeared  three- 
and-thirty  years  ago,  they  certainly  have  not  been  ful- 
filled. I  need  not  describe  what  everyone  knows  and 
has  read  about,  but  I  may  recall  to  men's  minds  that 


318  MISTAKE  ABOUT  HANWELL— THE  ORIGINAL  NIHILIST 

shortly  after  the  opening  of  this  world  fair,  it  was 
muttered  abroad  that  a  pickpocket  had  made  his 
appearance,  to  shear  his  flock  there  gathered  together, 
in  the  full  uniform  of  an  English  bishop.  As  far  as  I 
was  concerned,  coming  up  to  London  one  day,  I  found 
myself  in  a  railway  carriage  with  a  quaint  old  lady 
who  had  left  her  home  at  the  extremity  of  Cornwall, 
to  see  what  was  to  be  seen  at  this  unprecedented 
Exhibition.  She  had  never  travelled  so  far  from  the 
West  until  then,  and  was  naturally  anxious  to  learn 
what  she  could  about  things  in  general.  As  we  raced 
along  in  the  train,  when  close  to  London,  she  ex- 
pressed a  desire  to  have  Windsor  Castle  pointed  out 
to  her.  I  replied,  '  Oh  dear  me,  I  am  so  sorry  you  did 
not  speak  before ;  you  could  have  seen  it  perfectly 
well,  on  your  right,  by  looking  out  of  the  window.' 
'  Ah,  I  did  see  it  then  ; '  was  her  answer,  l  a  large  red 
brick  building,  was  it  not  ?  '  For  a  moment  I  hesi- 
tated, but  however  painful  it  might  be  to  undeceive 
her,  I  could  not  let  the  venerable  pilgrim  go  back  to 
Penzance,  in  the  belief  that  she  had  been  reverently 
gazing  at  Windsor  Castle  when  she  only  looked  upon 
Hanwell.  The  one  other  thing,  apart  from  what  is 
known  to  everybody,  that  comes  back  to  me  from  the 
Exhibition  of  1851,  was  the  completeness  with  which 
the  new  police  won  the  hearts  of  the  strangers,  more 
especially  of  the  strange  ladies,  by  their  good 
manners,  their  ubiquity,  and  their  zeal.  A  French- 
woman, with  whom  I  talked  as  we  were  crossing  the 
Channel  together,  expressed  herself  thus,  '  Je  raffole 


DEATH  OF  THE  DUKE   OF  WELLINGTON        319 

de  ces  policemen.'  Still  I  doubt  whether  a  compli- 
ment to  the  force  from  quite  another  quarter  is  not  a 
higher  one.  Very  soon  after  the  force  was  set  on  foot, 
chalk  manuscripts — I  suppose  they  may  be  described 
as  manuscripts — glared  upon  you  from  all  the  walls 
of  London,  '  No  Peel ;  no  new  police  ;  no  nothing.' 
The  publisher  of  this  pathetic  ejaculation,  who  may 
fairly  be  called  the  original  Nihilist,  seems  to  have 
felt  in  his  heart  of  hearts  how  terrible  a  blow  had 
been  aimed  at  the  republic  of  thieves  and  burglars, 
by  the  establishment  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  civilian 
army,  and  we  must  agree  with  him,  I  think,  that  if 
the  inhabitants  of  London  had  been  left  in  the  hands 
of  the  old  watchmen  until  now,  he  and  his  com- 
panions would  have  had  a  much  better  time  of  it. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  overlived  the  Exhibition 
of  1851  for  a  short  time,  and  then  died  full  of  years 
and  honours.  If  not  a  brilliant  minister,  at  least  he 
carried  into  statesmanship  the  same  unselfish  devo- 
tion to  the  interests  of  his  country,  which  renders  him 
so  remarkable  among  successful  generals.  I  recollect 
hearing  from  my  father  an  anecdote  told  him  by  the 
Duke  himself,  in  his  own  characteristic  language,  one 
day  when  he  was  dining  at  Apsley  House.  We  learn 
from  it,  with  what  contemptuous  indifference  this 
great  man  pushed  aside  all  considerations  of  personal 
dignity — false  personal  dignity,  as  he  thought  it — 
if  they  stood  in  the  way  of  his  duty  to  England. 
'  After  the  battle  of  Talavera,'  he  said,  f  I  wanted 
the  Spanish  force  to  make  a  movement,  and  called 


320  CRIMEAN   WAR 

upon  Cuesta  to  take  the  necessary  steps,  but  he  de- 
murred. He  said  by  way  of  answer,  "  for  the  honour 
of  the  Spanish  crown  I  cannot  attend  to  the  direc- 
tions of  the  British  general,  unless  that  British  general 
go  upon  his  knees  and  entreat  me  to  follow  his  advice." 
Now,'  proceeded  the  Duke,  '  I  wanted  the  thing 
done,  while  as  to  going  down  upon  my  knees  I  did 
not  care  a  twopenny  damn,  so  down  I  plumped.'  I 
was  amused,  and  I  may  add  provoked,  to  find,  several 
years  afterwards,  that  this  act  of  magnanimous  con- 
descension, showing  to  my  mind  a  far  nobler  sense  of 
self-respect  and  self-reliance  than  if  Wellington  had 
fussily  insisted  upon  his  own  pretensions  and  rights, 
did  not  recommend  itself  to  a  latterday  soldier  who 
had,  I  believe,  distinguished  himself  in  the  Crimean 
war ;  he,  forsooth,  thought  it  impossible  that  any 
British  Commander-in-  Chief,  should  so  far  degrade 
himself.  I  could  only  say,  in  that  case  either  my 
father  or  his  host  had  told  a  deliberate  lie.  That  was 
what  I  said  ;  what  I  thought  of-  the  Duke's  critic,  I 
did  not  trouble  myself  to  put  into  words. 

As  to  the  Crimean  war  in  1855, 1856, 1  have  little 
or  nothing  to  say  of  my  own.  It  was,  as  everyone 
knows,  grossly  mismanaged,  and  Marshal  St.  Arnaud's 
refusal  to  advance  immediately  after  the  Alma,  com- 
pelled the  allied  armies  to  turn  what  had  been  in- 
tended as  a  pounce,  or  to  use  the  French  phrase,  a 
coup  de  main,  on  Sebastopol,  into  a  regular  siege,  for 
which  they  were  not  prepared.  Again,  on  the  17th 
October,  when  the  bombardment  commenced,  I  believe 


STATE  OF  OUR  ARMY  321 

the  idea  was  to  overwhelm  the  Russian  guns  under  a 
tremendous  cannonade,  and  then  storm  the  place. 
But  as  the  French  artillery,  to  which  the  chief  portion 
of  this  business  beloDged  as  a  matter  of  course,  got 
smashed  up  and  silenced  in  three  quarters  of  an 
hour,  that  scheme  also  came  to  nothing.  I  myself 
always  fancied  that  the  Russians  were  afraid  of  a 
night  attack.  The  manner  in  which  they  kept  up  a 
perfectly  useless  fire  for  hours,  evening  after  evening, 
led  me  to  form  that  opinion,  and  I  should  have  been 
inclined  to  wait  for  a  time,  till  their  gunners  had 
tired  themselves  out  and  gone  to  rest,  and  then  have 
made  a  rush  upon  the  fortifications  ;  but  our  generals, 
I  suppose,  considered  all  that,  and  thought  the  attempt 
too  perilous.  As  soon  as  the  war  was  over  we  took 
care  to  inform  the  world  at  large  of  the  miserable 
state  of  our  army  (our  army,  not  our  soldiers,  thank 
God),  but  as  no  sufficient  steps  were  taken  then,  nor 
have  been  taken  since,  to  get  at  the  root  of  the  evil, 
we  might  just  as  well  have  kept  quiet.  It  was  little 
more  than  two  years  ago,  that  a  young  friend  of  mine 
sitting  next  a  man  of  great  literary  distinction,  whose 
authority  on  all  Crimean  matters  stands  deservedly 
high,  broke  out  into  natural  indignation  at  the  manner 
in  which  our  soldiers,  sent  from  England  (not  from 
India)  to  Egypt,  were  starved  and  poisoned  through 
the  blundering  of  the  authorities  at  home.  She 
declared,  with  true  feminine  impetuosity,  that  some- 
body ought  to  be  hanged  '  pour  encourager  les  autres.' 
'  Ah,  yes,'  her  neighbour  answered,  '  the  same  remark 


322      ZULU  WAR— EGYPTIAN  CAMPAIGN  OF  1882 

was  made  to  me  by  a  very  nice  girl  whom  I  took  in 
to  dinner  six-and-twenty  years  ago.  It  was  mouldy 
bread  and  green  coffee  then,  it  is  mouldy  bread  and 
putrid  meat,  I  understand,  now;  otherwise  there  is  no 
change,  we  have  simply  a  new  performance  of  the  old 
tragedy  by  another  set  of  actors,  and  I  feel  as  if  I 
were  carried  back  in  a  dream  to  the  days  of  the 
Crimea.' 

In  the  Zulu  war  the  preserved  meats  were  not 
amiss,  but  a  Government  eager  to  save  everything 
sent  cheaper  provisions  to  Egypt  (so,  at  least,  I 
was  told),  and  to  this  cheap  food  there  was  but 
one  objection,  that  it  was  quite  uneatable;  there- 
fore some  thirty  ships,  with  an  average  of  about 
three  hundred  invalids  apiece,  came  back  during 
the  months  of  August  and  September  1882,  to 
say  nothing  of  those  who  died  on  the  spot,  or 
brought  back  the  seeds  of  death  within  them  on  their 
return  from  Egypt.  Through  this  ill-organised  cam- 
paign I  lost  a  beloved  son.  But  when  a  man  who 
has  chosen  to  be  a  soldier  dies  for  his  country,  his 
friends  must  submit  to  the  misfortune  in  silence,  I 
therefore  say  nothing  about  him  from  myself.  Still 
I  do  not  think  it  out  of  place  to  mention  what 
happened  at  Manchester  (where  his  regiment,  the 
2nd  Dragoon  Guards,  was  quartered)  shortly  after  he 
had  been  taken  from  us.  On  Christmas  Day,  at  their 
annual  dinner,  the  privates  and  non-commissioned 
officers  of  his  troop  spent  their  hardly-earned  money 
in  buying  costly  flowers  ;  with  these  they  surrounded 


MINISTERIAL  HURRYINGS— INDIAN  MUTINY      323 

a  black- edged  tablet,  which  was  fixed  above  the  place 
where  he  ought  to  have  been  standing.  On  this  tablet 
were  written  the  following  verses,  verses  that  came, 
I  think  I  may  say,  from  the  heart  of  one  whom  he 
had  commanded,  and  represented  the  feeling  common 
to  hmi  and  all  his  comrades — 

Brave  as  the  bravest, 

Foremost  in  fight, 
Gallant  and  courteous, 

Generous  and  bright ; 
Beneath  the  turf  now 

Our  war-worn  captain  sleeps, 
And  over  him  here 

Each  grateful  trooper  weeps. 

Of  such  a  tribute  to  the  memory  of  his  son  any  father 
may  well  be  proud.  All  this,  if  we  may  judge  from 
the  Indian  regiments,  which  suffered  little  because 
they  were  better  cared  for,  might  have  been  avoided. 
But  everything  at  home  is  always  done  in  a  hurry ; 
ministers  have  to  scud  before  a  gust  of  popular  feeling, 
and  under  its  impulse  they  tumble  about  in  a  state 
of  bustling  inefficiency,  which  would  be  ludicrous,  if 
it  were  not  so  profoundly  tragical. 

The  Crimean  war  was  soon  followed  by  the  Indian 
Mutiny,  a  mutiny  helped  on,  I  should  say,  by  our 
blatant  candour  as  to  the  weakness  of  the  English 
administration.  '  An  Empire,'  as  Napoleon  said, '  may 
be  made  of  adamant,  but  a  free  press  will  grind  it 
into  powder.'  At  this  moment  we  are  informing 
the  Mahdi,  through  his  agents  in  England  and  in 
Egypt,  of  all  that  we  mean  to  do,  and  yet  we  make 


324  INDIAN  MUTINY 

sure  of  our  ultimate  success.1  From,  this  Indian 
Mutiny  we  escaped,  as  everyone  knows,  by  the  skin 
of  our  teeth.  Whether  we  should  do  so  a  second 
time  is  a  very  serious  question,  but  as  I  have  no 
recollections  connected  with  this  passage  in  our 
history,  not  equally  belonging  to  all  other  Englishmen, 
I  pass  on.  There  is,  indeed,  one  thing  worth  noting. 
As  I  stopped  at  Exeter  shortly  after  the  relief  of 
Lucknow,  I  read  in  the  Exeter  newspaper,  at  the 
London  Inn,  a  lyrical  poem  on  the  relief  of  Lucknow, 
which  struck  me  as  excellent  of  its  kind.  Having  to 
hurry  on  by  the  next  train,  I  failed  to  secure  the 
paper,  but  if  any  Devonshire  man  happens  to  know 
where  it  may  be  found,  he  should  not  allow  so  fine  a 
piece  of  work  to  drop  into  oblivion. 

1  This  does  not  refer  to  the  present  moment.  It  was  written  before 
the  Mahdi  died,  of  course ;  but  another  Mahdi  has  only  to  rise  up, 
and  he  may  rely  upon  receiving  all  necessary  information  from  the 
Times,  Daily  I'fews,  &c. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Napoleon's  attack  upon  Austria — Volunteer  movement — False  eco- 
nomy— Reasons  why  the  Boers  revolted — State  of  the  Navy — Zulu 
discipline — Curious  story  from  New  Guinea — Civil  war  in  America 
— Accident  to  General  Lee's  despatches — Lord  Derby's  opportunity 
— Fenian  murder  of  a  policeman  in  Manchester. 

IN  1859  Europe  was  startled  by  Louis  Napoleon's 
unprovoked  attack  upon  Austria,  and  under  the  im- 
pulse of  that  sudden  alarm  the  volunteer  movement 
took  its  present  form,  and  I  did  my  best  for  it.  I  was 
offered  a  captaincy  in  one  of  the  City  regiments,  but 
this  I  declined.  I  was  not  fit  for  an  officer,  and  though 
I  would  gladly  have  gone  into  the  ranks  as  a- private, 
my  advancing  age,  to  say  nothing  of  my  lameness  and 
blindness,  stood  in  the  way.  My  task,  therefore,  was 
to  ransack  every  corner  of  the  City,  soliciting  sub- 
scriptions, not  without  success,  from  the  merchants 
and  tradesmen  of  London.  Occasionally,  of  course,  I 
met  with  a  rebuff  from  a  '  capable  citizen,'  but  rough 
words  break  no  bones,  and  when  such  a  thing 
happened,  I  shrugged  my  shoulders  and  knocked 
at  the  next  door.  I  also  joined  others  in  the 
suggestion  that  Lord  Weinyss,  then  Lord  Elcho, 
should  put  himself  at  the  head  of  this  important 
development  of  our  national  common  sense.  I 


326    VOLUNTEER  MOVEMENT— LORD  WEMYSS 

well  knew  that  during  his  undergraduate  days,  he 
had  been  a  sort  of  '  Admirable  Crichton  '  among 
his  Christ  Church  friends,  combining  all  the  qualities 
which  make  a  man  popular  with  mental  accom- 
plishments and  physical  powers.  Moreover  he  was 
still  young  and  full  of  energy,  so  that  he  seemed  to 
me  to  be  the  very  man  fitted  to  undertake  the  task. 
I  pointed  out  this  in  various  ]etters,  but  whether  his 
acceptance  of  the  position  was  propter  hoc  or  only  post 
hoc  I  cannot  say,  nor  does  it  much  matter,  but  I  have 
always  fancied,  though  I  never  put  myself  forward,  or 
claimed  any  merit  for  my  labours,  that  few  people 
took  more  trouble  to  bring  the  volunteer  organisation 
into  shape  than  I  did.  Not  that  the  spontaneous,  and 
I  may  say,  instinctive  protest  of  the  British  people, 
against  the  apathy  and  passive  treason  of  our  successive 
administrations  appears  to  me  a  sufficient  safeguard, 
when  we  contemplate  the  many  dangers  that  threaten 
us,  but  still  it  is  creditable  to  the  English  people,  and 
good  as  far  as  it  goes.  Ministers  ought  to  know  and 
honestly  inform  those  who  trust  them  with  power, 
looking  their  clients  in  the  face,  that  the  whole  art  of 
war  has  been  completely  remodelled  of  late  years, 
whilst  we  stupidly  blunder  along  in  the  old  way. 
Very  likely,  if  our  enemies,  whoever  they  may  be,  gave 
us  time  enough,  the  latent  strength  of  England  and 
the  resolute  character  of  our  race  might  bring  any 
contest  to  an  honourable  conclusion.  But  that  is  just 
what  they  will  not  do.  Everybody  can  see  for  himself 
that  wars  now  are,  and  will  be,  short,  sharp,  and  de- 


CONTINENTAL  ENMITY  327 

cisive.  A  month  or  two  settles  the  question  ;  so  that 
the  landing  of  a  French  army  or  the  landing  of  a 
German  army  upon  our  coasts  would  find  us  quite 
unprepared,  and  the  world  would  be  astonished,  and 
I  am  sorry  to  add  amused,  by  a  catastrophe  more 
sudden  and  tremendous  than  any  she  has  seen  since 
the  fall  of  Babylon.  Our  governors  seem  to  forget 
how  overcrowded  the  country  is,  how  its  means  of 
living  depend  almost  entirely,  thanks  to  their  boasted 
free  trade,  upon  foreign  importations,  and  how 
complicated  and  precarious  is  the  texture  of  our  arti- 
ficial and  accidental  prosperity.  Hence  even  the  as- 
cendency of  a  hostile  fleet  upon  the  seas  for  a  month 
or  two  would  force  us  to  surrender  at  discretion,  be- 
cause we  should  not  be  able  to  feed  the  people,  and 
England,  once  overthrown,  would  never,  I  think,  re- 
cover her  place  among  the  nations. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  talk  just  now  of  a  bitter  feel- 
ing having  arisen  against  this  country  on  the  Continent. 
As  to  that  I  believe  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  mis- 
conception ;  this  feeling  is  not  a  real  animosity,  and 
would  soon  disappear  if  we  made  ourselves  strong.  It 
is,  in  fact,  not  to  disguise  the  truth  from  ourselves, 
very  much  akin  to  the  enmity  of  a  burglar  against  a 
lonely  house,  easy  of  access  and  full  of  plate  and  jewels. 
Foreign  powers  are  strong  and  greedy  ;  they  think  us, 
and  I  am  afraid  they  are  right,  not  only  rich  but  weak 
at  present.  Now  a  ruler,  whether  he  be  called  a  king 
or  the  president  of  a  republic,  when  he  finds  himself 
the  nominal  master  of  a  huge,  troublesome,  and  ex- 

22 


328          LA  GRANDE  NATION— BISHOP  BUTLER 

pensive  army,  is  not  unlike  the  man  who  maintains  a 
large  stud  of  race-horses  at  a  great  cost.    They  are  not 
kept  merely  to  look  at ;  no,  the  owner  means  to  get  his 
money  back  out  of  them  somehow  or  other.     Neither, 
we  may  be  sure,  is  France  spending  uncounted  millions 
to  make  her  navy  stronger  than  ours,  only  that  she 
may  reckon  up  the  tonnage  of  her  ships,  and  count 
the  number  of  her  guns.     She  may  not  for  the  pre- 
sent have  any  deliberate  intention  of  bringing  us  to 
ruin,  but  the  power  to  do  so  would  be  as  it  were  a 
pleasant  savour  in  her  mouth,  and  she  might  at  any 
moment  yield  to  the  temptation  of  showing  us  and  the 
world  what '  La  grande  nation '  can  do.  Bishop  Butler, 
in  his  '  Analogy,'  throws  out  a  suggestion,  that  a  whole 
people  may  now  and  then  run  into  madness,  and  move 
all  together  under  the  same  delusion,  just  like  a  single 
maniac.  And  I  sometimes  doubt  whether  posterity  may 
not  agree  with  him,  and  say  of  us,  '  Surely  the  Eng- 
land of  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  must 
have  been  out  of  her  wits,  in  sacrificing  her  glory  and 
her  life  to  ephemeral  commonplaces  and  party  cant.  She 
grudged/  they  will  say,  *  the  insurance  money  neces- 
sary to  keep  herself  safe,  lest  an  untrained  and  ignorant 
multitude  should  grumble  against  over-taxation,  and 
amused  herself  with  playing  at  being  a  first-rate  power, 
not  having  any  of  the  equipments  of  a  first-rate  power. 
She  went  through  all  the  grimaces  of  diplomacy,  with- 
out remembering  that  the  essence  of  diplomacy  is  to 
hint,  amid  a  profusion  of  bows  and  smiles  and  compli- 
ments, that  under  certain  circumstances  you  may  be 


MR.  GLADSTONE  A  FIDDLER  329 

obliged  to  put  your  hand  upon  the  hilt  of  your  sword, 
and  that  if  the  hilt  have  no  blade  underneath  it,  and 
those  whom  you  are  addressing  know  the  fact  as  well 
as  you  do,  these  gesticulations  are  not  only  useless 
but  contemptible.' 

It  has  been  said  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  smartly,  but  not 
I  think  unjustly,  that  he  keeps  fiddling  away  on  the 
franchise,  whilst  the  Empire  burns ;  but  the  Conserva- 
tive leaders  are  nearly,  if  not  quite,  as  much  in  fault  as 
Mr.  Gladstone  or  any  other  Liberal  minister.  Both 
parties,  from  my  point  of  view,  are  erring  grievously  in 
this  matter.  They  shrink  from  looking  their  constitu- 
ents in  the  face,  and  telling  them  the  truth,  lest  by  ex- 
plaining how  large  sums  of  public  money  ought  to  be 
spent  now  on  behalf  of  the  public,  they  should  damage 
their  electioneering  prospects.  Proclaiming  peace 
where  there  is  no  peace,  they  deceive  others,  and  let 
us  hope  themselves,  and  cajole  a  short-sighted,  money- 
grudging  populace  by  rival  feats  of  arithmetic,  each  pre- 
tending to  be  more  economical  than  the  other.  Now, 
truly  economical  they  neither  of  them  are.  Misplaced 
thrift,  the  thrift  for  instance  of  that  narrow-minded 
skinflint  Joseph  Hume,  upon  whom  Mr.  Gladstone' 
showered  his  praises  the  other  day,  to  flatter  the 
people  of  Aberdeen,  is  simply  the  worst  form  of  ex- 
travagance. Surely,  anybody  with  eyes  in  his  head 
can  see  this  for  himself,  when  he  considers  what  sums 
(to  say  nothing  of  what  lives)  we  have  thrown  away 
in  Afghanistan,  in  Zululand,  in  the  Transvaal,  in 
Egypt,  in  the  Soudan,  because  of  our  weakness  and 


330  THE  BOERS  AND  CETEWAYO 

want  of  preparation.  No  one  of  these  mischiefs 
would  have  occurred,  not  a  shilling  of  that  money 
would  have  been  wasted,  if  our  enemies  knew  that 
the  England  they  were  called  upon  to  confront,  was 
an  England  really  armed  and  properly  equipped. 
Does  anyone  suppose  that  if  it  had  been  under  the 
guardianship  of  Germany,  or  Russia,  or  of  France, 
that  the  Boers  had  taken  refuge  in  their  agony  of 
terror,  they  would  have  dared  to  break  out  into  open 
rebellion  against  them,  as  they  broke  out  against 
us,  the  moment  that  terror  had  passed  away  ?  These 
Boers,  who  always  hated  us,  were  despairingly  afraid 
of  Cetewayo,  and  not  without  reason,  as  everyone  who 
knows  how,  in  comparison  with  Zulu  martial  educa- 
tion the  discipline  of  Sparta  was  effeminately  slack, 
will  readily  agree.  Any  strange  and  unexpected 
form  of  fighting,  such  as  the  historical  rush  of  the 
Highlanders,  claymore  in  hand,  or  the  fanatical 
charges  of  an  Arab  host,  armed  with  spears  made  of 
real  steel,  not  of  Sheffield  composition  put  together 
for  sale  in  the  market,  is  dangerous  even  to  first- 
class  troops,  till  thoroughly  understood.  Now  the 
battle  array  of  the  Zulus  was  a  great  deal  more  than 
a  strange  and  new  form  of  fighting.  As  the  out- 
growth of  a  highly  organised  military  system,  it  had 
made  itself  so  formidable  to  the  Boers,  that  they  fled 
to  us  for  protection.  As  soon  as  the  danger  was 
over,  they  indulged  their  old  hatred  against  us,  but 
they  indulged  it  because  we  were  weak  and  unready  ; 
if  we  had  been  strong,  they  would  have  remained 


JOSEPH  HUME'S  ECONOMY  331 

quiet  enough.  Therefore,  as  I  said  before,  these 
Joseph  Hume's  scrapings  together  are  not  really 
savings,  even  if  we  count  honour  for  nothing. 
Millions  might  have  been  spent,  but  they  would  have 
been  spent  well  and  not  ill,  and  we  should  never 
have  seen  the  precious  blood  of  brave  Englishmen 
poured  forth  like  dirty  water,  as  it  now  is,  if  by 
chance  the  murmurs  of  those  to  whom  they  look  for 
office  drag  our  ministers  into  some  unpremeditated, 
ill-managed,  and  generally  useless  expedition.  As  to 
the  other  points  connected  with  this  miserable  Boer 
mishap,  I  have  not  the  heart  to  discuss  them  at  any 
length.  Still,  I  cannot  but  observe  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
always  overlooks  the  heaviest  part  of  the  charge 
against  him.  He  defends  himself  for  having  made 
peace ;  what  Englishmen  ask  is  why  he  ever  made 
war  ?  When  out  of  office  he  led  the  Boers  to 
believe  that  he  sympathised  with  them  entirely,  and 
when  he  regained  office  he  had  fourteen  months, 
during  which  he  might  have  arranged  matters  to 
everybody's  satisfaction  (for  who  cared  about  retain- 
ing the  Transvaal  ?)  But  for  some  reason,  or  for  no 
reason,  he  neglected  the  opportunity  given  him,  and 
we  see  the  results.  Would  to  God  that  he  had  called 
to  mind  that  famous  sentence  of  Polonius,  *  Beware 
of  entrance  into  a  quarrel,'  somewhat  earlier  than  he 
did,  and  applied  it  in  another  sense. 

Long  after  I  had  written  the  above,  Mr.  W.  H. 
Smith  suddenly  called  attention  to  the  state  of 
the  navy.  The  country  seems  inclined  to  take  the 


332  STATE  OF  THE  NAVY 

question  up,  and  will  probably  force  ministers  into 
some  sort  of  action.  Their  adherents  in  the  press 
of  course  deprecate  panic,  and  attempt  to  solve  the 
difficulty  by  praising  themselves  and  their  masters. 
What  I  am  afraid  of,  in  the  near  future,  is,  that  the 
Government,  deaf  and  blind  to  everything  but  party 
objects,  will  do  just  enough  to  satisfy  a  partisan  Par- 
liament, thereby  enabling  its  members  to  make  glib 
rhetorical  speeches,  and  throw  dust  in  the  eyes  of  the 
people.  As  to  the  past,  if  no  better  excuse  can  be  put 
forward  on  behalf  of  the  past  administration l  than 
Sir  Farrer  HerschelFs  excuse,  somebody  ought  to  be 
impeached.  He  is,  I  presume,  a  more  or  less  respon- 
sible assertor  of  Liberal  infallibility,  yet  all  he  can 
say  amounts  to  this,  'Ironclads  so  often  prove 
failures,  that  it  is  wise  to  save  our  money  and  wait 
till  we  can  secure  perfect  ships/  Now  if  Sir  Farrer 
Herschell  had  been  a  native  of  one  of  those  countries 
for  which  a  powerful  navy  is  a  luxury,  and  not  a 
necessity  of  life  ;  if  he  had  been  a  German,  an  Italian, 
or  even  a  Frenchman,  his  arguments  might  be  sound 
enough.  In  a  war  between  France  and  Germany, 
the  result  will  depend  upon  the  armies  issuing  from 
Alsace  and  Lorraine ;  if  they  gain  the  victory,  the 
Germans  will  once  more  impose  their  own  terms  upon 
France  ;  if  they  are  defeated  and  driven  back,  the 
French  Republic  will  have  the  better  in  any  subse- 
quent negotiations  for  peace ;  and  what  may  have 

1  I  was  writing,  of  course,  of  the  Gladstone  Administration,  but  it 
applies,  if  not  equally,  all  but  equally,  to  the  Tories. 


SIR  F.  HERSCHELL'S  WAITING  ATTITC7DE       333 

happened  in  the  meantime  to  their  respective  fleets  is 
hardly  worth  considering.  Germany,  therefore,  might 
safely  watch  the  progress  of  naval  architecture  for 
any  number  of  years,  and  wait,  without  adding  to 
German  war-ships,  till  she  saw  her  way  clearly  before 
her.  The  same  thing  may  be  said,  more  or  less,  of 
all  the  greater  powers  ;  but  as  for  us,  though  we  find 
it  hard  to  spend  money  without  getting  an  adequate 
return  for  our  expenditure,  we  have  to  do  it.  If  we 
tarry  for  Sir  F.  Herschell's  ideal  vessel,  not  begin- 
ning to  set  our  house  in  order  till  she  is  discovered, 
France  and  other  countries  will  not  tarry ;  and  what- 
ever may  be  Sir  Farrer  Herschell's  feelings,  it  will 
be  but  small  consolation  to  the  average  Englishman, 
when  he  sees  England  passing  under  the  yoke,  that 
the  ships  that  have  wrested  from  her  the  empire  of 
the  seas,  and  crushed  her  down  into  permanent  in- 
significance, are  still  open  to  criticism  in  point  of 
construction.  It  is  surely  well  to  reflect  that  our 
navy  is  our  only  real  defence,  whilst  the  navies  of  all 
the  rest  of  the  world  are  simply  engines  of  attack — a 
distinction  between  us  and  them  which  makes  all  the 
difference.  The  only  real  remedy — I  mean  that  we 
should  despatch  our  chattering  Parliament  into  space 
for  twenty  years  or  so,  and  appoint  a  man  of  energy 
and  foresight  whose  motto  is  '  deeds  not  words ' — will 
not  be  resorted  to;  we  must  therefore,  I  fear,  trust 
to  Providence.  Neither  Whigs  nor  Tories  will  have 
courage  enough  to  take  John  Bull  by  the  horns,  and 
turn  him  manfully  and  effectually  into  the  right  road. 


334  ZULU  DISCIPLINE 

'  A  plague  on  both  your  houses '  say  I ;  and  there,  so 
far  as  I  am  concerned,  the  matter  must  rest. 

Before  this  digression,  I  said  that  the  discipline 
of  Sparta  was  effeminately  slack  as  compared  with 
that  of  Zululand.  Their  military  organisation  would 
no  doubt  have  secured  them  a  great  lordship  through 
Southern  Africa,  if  they  had  not  fallen  in  with  the 
white  man's  rifles  and  cannon  ;  even  against  him 
they  struggled  magnificently,  and  all  but  achieved 
an  impossible  triumph.  The  gentleman  with  whom  I 
conversed  on  the  subject  was  a  Mr.  Holland,  a  man 
of  great  general  knowledge  and  intelligence,  besides 
being  thoroughly  conversant  with  all  the  elements  of 
South  African  life,  whether  European  or  native. 
This  is  what  he  told  me.  All  the  male  children,  as 
soon  as  weaned,  were  taken  away  from  their  mothers, 
and  placed  in  infant  military  schools  under  the 
superintendence  of  grim  old  crones,  devoted  to  the 
king's  orders.  In  these  school-camps  their  education 
proceeded  step  by  step.  No  pains  were  spared  to 
develop  strength,  activity,  craft,  and  daring,  whilst 
for  any  serious  failure  they  had  but  one  punishment, 
death.  The  manner  in  which  they  took  what  may 
be  called  their  military  degree,  according  to  Mr.  Hol- 
land, was  as  follows.  On  being  pronounced  com- 
petent to  face  the  fatigues,  and  go  through  the  drill 
appointed  for  a  grown-up  soldier,  the  body  of  fight- 
ing undergraduates  went  up  for  their  final  examina- 
tion thus.  They  were  turned  out  all  together 
against  any  wild  beast  that  might  happen  to  be  in 


ZULU  MILITARY— LITTLE  GO  335 

the  neighbourhood,  and  expected  to  master  and 
capture  it  without  weapons,  by  their  hands  alone. 
The  wild  beast  in  question  might  be  a  panther,  bull, 
or  even  a  lion  ;  of  that  they  had  to  take  their  chance. 
Those  who  died  under  the  claws  and  teeth  of  their 
savage  antagonists  died  with  honour,  and  the  sur- 
vivors were  transferred  at  once  to  a  more  advanced 
training  school.  When  there,  forced  marches,  and 
military  exercises  and  rehearsals  of  the  most  elabo- 
rate kind,  tried  the  strength  of  these  recruits  to  the 
utmost,  and  a  failure  to  accomplish  the  object  before 
you  had  to  be  expiated  by  a  violent  death.  Besides 
this,  there  was  but  one  road  to  love  or  marriage,  and 
that  was  through  the  blood  of  the  king's  enemies. 
The  man  who  did  not  or  could  not  '  wash  his  spear ' 
was  condemned  to  perpetual  celibacy.  We  cannot 
therefore  wonder  that  Cetewayo's  young  men,  so  dis- 
ciplined and  tempted,  were  always  panting  for  war, 
and  that  the  results  of  the  whole  system  proved  to 
be  a  very  terrible  survival  of  the  fittest.  These  were 
the  men,  who,  with  no  weapon  but  their  assegais,  were 
found  lying  in  heaps  thirty  yards  from  the  mouths 
of  our  mitrailleuse  guns,  and  who,  before  we  forced 
a  quarrel  upon  them,  by  their  savage  dexterity  and 
untameable  courage,  had  struck  terror  into  the  hearts 
of  the  Boers — a  terror  such  as  no  civilised  enemy  could 
have  awakened.  We  might  have  saved  ourselves  a 
great  deal  of  trouble  by  simply  letting  them  alone. 

With    reference    to   the    fighting   of    barbarous 
tribes,  I  may  as  well  introduce  a  story  here,  read  by 


336  BATTLE  IN  NEW  GUINEA 

me  out  of  a  book  that  happened  to  be  lying  on  our 
club  table  many  years  ago.  This  book  purported  to 
record  the  recollections  of  a  retired  merchant  skipper, 
and  related  his  more  important  voyages  with  consider- 
able minuteness  of  detail,  but  I  only  keep  in  memory 
one  legend.  Still,  as  the  events  described  are  said  to 
have  taken  place  on  the  coast  of  New  Guinea,  towards 
which  country  our  Australian  colonists  and  German 
unfriends  are  now  turning  their  eyes,  it  may  be  as  well 
to  preserve  the  facts,  if  facts  they  be,  from  oblivion. 
The  merchant  skipper  told  his  tale  with  great  spirit, 
and  if,  as  experts  assure  me,  the  whole  statement 
must  be  a  fable,  he  yet  showed  extraordinary  tact 
and  skill  in  shaping  his  story.  According  to  his 
account,  he  and  his  first  mate  landed  somewhere 
in  New  Guinea  to  shoot  parrots  and  other  game. 
Whilst  thus  engaged,  they  heard  a  rustling  in  the 
bushes  behind  them  ;  they  turned  round  in  some 
alarm,  and  found  themselves  face  to  face  with  a  tall 
savage  painted  red  and  yellow  all  over.  The  gentle- 
man stepped  forward,  made  them  a  military  salute, 
exclaiming  at  the  same  time  '  Plaise  your  honours, 
I'm  an  Arafoura.'  He  then  explained  to  them  that 
though  a  foreigner,  he  had  through  a  long  series  of 
troubles  and  romances  fought  his  way  to  the  chief- 
tainship of  a  neighbouring  clan.  He  added  that  he 
had  heard  of  their  landing,  and  having  still  some 
sympathy  with  white  men,  had  moved  down  from 
his  own  district  to  save  them  from  the  leader  of  a 
neighbouring  sept ;  he  then  proceeded,  thereby  show- 


NEW  GUINEA  UNIFOKMS— IRISH  MANGO  CAPAC    337 

ing  that  he  had  an  eye  to  the  main  chance,  that  as  he 
was  about  to  fight  a  battle  on  their  behalf,  he  trusted 
they  would  not  mind  stationing  themselves  with 
their  fowling-pieces  on  the  enemy's  flank,  and  firing 
upon  them  without  a  pause.  '  Pop  away  at  the  white 
paints/  said  he,  '  and  you  cannot  go  wrong.' 

He  then  gave  them  his  own  history  ;  how  he  had 
served  in  the  army  for  a  certain  time  ;  how  on  his 
return  to  Ireland  he  had  entangled  himself  in  some 
national  conspiracy,  and  had  been  transported  for 
fourteen  years.  Whilst  undergoing  his  sentence,  he 
and  nine  other  convicts  made  their  escape,  and  pushed 
on  northwards  towards  the  unknown  continent. 
Eight  of  the  party  perished  in  their  desperate  under- 
taking, but  he  and  one  other,  also  an  old  soldier, 
struggled  to  the  end,  and  constructing  a  raft  at  one 
of  the  extreme  points  of  Australia,  crossed  the 
Torres  Strait  into  New  Guinea.  When  there  they 
were  at  once  made  slaves  of  by  the  natives,  but 
owing  to  their  habits  of  discipline,  and  superior  know- 
ledge of  life,  they  gradually  earned  their  liberty,  got 
promotion  in  the  savage  army,  and  at  last,  after  a 
battle  in  which  his  last  surviving  comrade  had 
fallen,  he  found  himself  chosen  to  be  the  chief  of  the 
tribe.  The  action  for  which  the  two  seamen  were 
enlisted  to  serve  took  place  on  the  following  day,  and 
was  contested  with  unflinching  courage.  The  Irish 
Arafoura  led  on  his  red  and  yellow  followers,  and  a 
gigantic  warrior  bedaubed  with  white  paint  acted 
the  part  of  a  barbarian  Achilles  on  the  other  side, 


338  FALL  OF  THE  RIVAL  CHIEF 

but  unfortunately  for  him  he  was  not,  like  his 
Thessalian  forerunner,  invulnerable,  and  a  bullet 
from  one  of  the  sailors  ended  his  career.  When  this 
happened,  the  Irishman  was  so  delighted  that  he 
rushed  out  of  the  battle,  covered  with  blood  and  dust, 
and  exclaimed  aloud,  'that  was  a  good  shot,  your 
honours  ;  you  couldn't  find  a  bigger  blackguard  than 
that  fellow  if  you  searched  the  country  for  a  hundred 
miles  round.'  By  the  fall  of  this  great  antagonist, 
victory  was  secured  to  the  skipper's  allies.  The 
white  paints  fled  in  disorder,  and  the  chief  of  the 
conquerors  joined  his  European  friends,  saying  to 
them,  *  And  now  your  honours,  if  you  please,  I'll 
take  a  drink,  for  them  Arafouras  die  hard,  and  fight 
like  divvils.'  But  whilst  their  superior  officer  re- 
freshed himself  in  this  harmless  manner,  his  dark 
subordinates  spread  themselves  over  the  field  of 
battle,  murdering  the  wounded  white  paints  without 
scruple.  The  English  allies  objected  to  this,  and 
asked  him  why  he  permitted  it :  his  answer  amounted 
to  this  :  *  You  see  I  do  not  myself  commit  any  such 
cruelty,  I  would  not  do  anything  of  the  kind  for  the 
world ;  but  my  hold  on  the  tribe  is  not  sufficiently 
strong  to  enable  me  to  set  their  habits  and  traditions 
at  defiance,  and  therefore  I  am  obliged  to  wink  at 
many  practices,  though  I  do  not  approve  of  them.' 
On  the  same  principle  he  afterwards  declined  to 
accept  presents  of  rum  and  brandy,  because  he  had 
to  keep  his  head  cool  and  his  eye  vigilant,  against 
the  jealousy  and  intrigues  of  those  whom  he  had 


CIVIL  WAR  IN  AMERICA  339 

supplanted.  These  incidents  were  put  into  very 
good  Irish,  and  skilfully  interwoven  with  the  fable, 
if  it  were  a  fable.  The  great  argument  against  the 
truth  of  the  story  is,  that  he  spoke  his  old  language 
as  fluently  as  if  he  had  lived  in  Dublin  or  Cork  till 
a  week  before  the  time  of  his  meeting  the  skipper, 
and  this  experts  affirm  to  be  impossible  ;  still,  the 
objectors  overlook  the  fact  that  his  comrade  had  died 
but  recently,  and  two  men  constantly  talking  together 
might  have  retained  a  power,  which  must  have  been 
lost  to  a  single  man  among  strangers.  He  seemed  to 
have  introduced  a  certain  discipline  into  the  savage 
life  of  his  adopted  clan,  and  to  have  generally  im- 
proved it.  It  would  be  interesting,  in  future  years, 
as  the  power  of  Australia  extends  itself  over  the 
neighbouring  island,  to  ascertain  whether  in  some 
Arafoura  tribe  any  traces  are  to  be  found  of  this 
Manco  Capac  in  the  rough. 

In  18 60  the  Civil  War  in  America  took  place,  con- 
stituting a  great  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
Whether  the  Southerners  had  not,  strictly  speaking,  a 
right  to  withdraw  from  a  confederation  entered  into  by 
mutual  consent,  when  their  northern  associates  inter- 
fered with  them  at  home,  might  fairly  be  argued  ;  but 
those  enterprising  neighbours  put  aside  such  technical 
questions,  asserted  the  right  of  the  strongest,  and  pre- 
vailed. I  suppose  even  if  fortune  had  not  sided  with 
the  conquerors,  they  would,  through  their  superior 
resources,  ultimately  have  worn  their  antagonists 
down,  but  they  would  have  taken  longer  about  it. 


340      MEETING  AT  CUDDESDEN  AN  EX-OFFICER 

I  recollect  meeting  at  Cuddesden,  in  Bishop  Wilber- 
force's  house,  some  American  guests.  One  of  them, 
then  in  orders,  had  served  through  the  war  as  an 
artillery  officer  in  the  Northern  army.  He  was  a 
very  intelligent  gentleman,  as  clergymen  who  have 
begun  as  soldiers  or  sailors  often  are,  and  he  seemed 

O  ' 

certain  of  what  he  told  me.  According  to  him,  the 
failure  of  Lee  in  his  attack  upon  Pennsylvania  was 
mainly  owing  to  a  piece  of  carelessness  on  the  part  of 
one  of  his  subordinate  generals.  This  officer,  a  hot- 
tempered  and  impetuous  man,  received  a  document 
from  Lee  containing  all  the  details  of  the  proposed 
invasion,  and  pointing  out  to  him  what  steps  he 
personally  had  to  take.  Something  or  other  made 
him  angry  ;  he  was  too  good  a  soldier  to  disobey  or 
to  criticise  his  orders,  but  he  vented  his  spite  upon 
the  paper,  by  tearing  it  up,  and  throwing  it  upon 
the  ground.  The  moment  his  troops  moved  on, 
these  fragments  were  picked  up  and  pieced  together 
by  a  hostile  partisan,  who  sent  them  over  at  once  to 
McClellan.  Lee  accordingly  found  all  his  schemes 
foreshown  and  guarded  against,  so  that  he  was 
eventually  foiled  and  driven  back,  and,  as  it  happened, 
the  check  he  then  received  proved  to  be  the  real 
turning  point  of  the  war.  My  friend  assured  me 
that,  according  to  his  belief,  but  for  this  accident  the 
war  would  certainly  have  lasted  for  two  years  longer, 
even  if  the  Federals  had  persevered  to  the  end,  in  the 
face  of  the  fresh  difficulties  they  would  have  had  to 
encounter.  In  consequence  of  her  victory  America 


DEMOCRACY  IN  AMERICA  AND  IN  ENGLAND  341 

promises  to  become  by-and-by  the  greatest  power  in 
the  world — only  the  world  is  apt  to  take  its  own  course 
in  such  matters  ;  hence  her  ultimate  fate  is  not  so  easy 
to  foretell.  In  spite  of  Mr.  Lowell's  brilliant  address 
at  Birmingham,  I  doubt  whether  the  fairy  palace  of 
democracy,  there  upreared  by  him,  rests  upon  trust- 
worthy foundations.  America  has  so  much  elbow- 
room,  and  such  enormous  natural  resources,  that  she 
can  put  the  mischiefs  of  universal  suffrage  aside  for 
the  present  without  feeling  them.  The  evil  which  in 
our  worn-out  country  would  become  a  corroding 
ulcer,  for  her,  under  existing  circumstances,  is 
nothing  more  than  a  wart  or  a  pimple.  Land,  as 
Lord  Sherbrooke  pointed  out  with  great  wisdom  many 
years  ago,  an  irritant  here,  is  a  sedative  there,  and 
the  spirit  of  envy,  the  curse  of  men  called  Liberals,  is 
kept  languid  and  inactive  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  whilst  the  abounding  resources  of  a  new 
and  magnificent  country  are  being  developed  by  the 
labour  of  a  comparatively  scanty  population.  Mr. 
Lowell  and  other  patriotic  Americans  are  quite  right 
in  not  troubling  themselves  about  the  immediate 
future  of  their  people.  It  may  be  one,  two,  or  even 
five  hundred  years,  before  the  latent  dangers  sure  to 
develop  themselves  rise  to  the  surface,  but  I  certainly 
do  not  think  we  should  be  wise,  worn-out  and  over- 
peopled as  we  are,  to  imitate  the  example  and  tread 
in  the  steps  of  that  red-blooded  young  giant.  I  say 
this  without  hesitation,  although  we  are  told  among 
other  things  by  enthusiastic  Liberals,  that  Christ 


342   CHRIST  A  DEMOCRAT— LORD  DERBY'S  CHANCE 

himself  was  a  democrat ;  this  I  do  not  dispute,  but 
then  we  must  remember  that  '  His  kingdom  was  not 
of  this  world.'  If  every  man  were  perfectly  unselfish, 
devoted  to  duty  and  an  earnest  lover  of  God,  the  earth 
might  be  quite  ready  for  democracy.  In  point  of  fact, 
one  Government  would  be  just  as  good  as  another, 
inasmuch  as  we  should  require  no  government  at  all, 
every  man  being  a  law  to  himself.  But  in  the  mean- 
time, for  us  who  live  under  monarchies  or  republics 
very  much  of  this  world,  the  surrendering  the 
national  power  into  the  hands  of  the  lowest  class,  in 
other  words  of  that  class  which,  without  any  fault 
of  its  own,  is  more  liable  than  any  other,  through  its 
ignorance,  impulsiveness,  and  blind  reliance  upon 
unprincipled  demagogues,  to  be  led  into  error,  seems 
to  be  at  least  somewhat  premature.  Having  said  this 
much,  it  would  be  unfair  to  our  artisans  and  work- 
men not  to  point  out,  how  patiently  and  magnani- 
mously they  endured  the  distresses  that  befell  them, 
owing  to  this  civil  war  and  the  consequent  interrup- 
tion of  our  American  trade. 

I  have  always  fancied  (of  course  it  is  easy  to  in- 
dulge in  such  Alnaschar  dreams  when  you  are  not 
obliged  to  act  upon  them)  that  our  English  aristocrats 
here  missed  a  wonderful  opportunity  of  recovering 
any  ground  they  might  have  lost  in  popular  estima- 
tion; they  missed  it,  I  think,  because  the  late  Lord 
Derby  did  not  perceive,  or  at  any  rate  did  not  take 
advantage  of  an  opening,  through  which  he  might 
have  made  himself,  as  it  were,  the  King  of  the  North. 


COTTON  FAMINE  343 

His  riches  were  great,  and  what  is  more,  quite  avail- 
able, his  family  is  one  of  the  noblest  in  the  land,  and 
besides  this,  he  was  perhaps  the  most  effective  natural 
orator  of  his  day.  Now  if  he  had  chosen  to  use  the 
influence  attainable  by  the  exercise  of  these  three 
powers  in  combination,  it  is  difficult  to  name  the 
height  to  which  he  could  not  have  risen.  Supposing 
he  had  subscribed  100,000/.  to  begin  with,  and 
promised  5001.  a  week  as  long  as  the  evil  days  lasted, 
taking  care  to  accompany  these  gifts  by  telling  the 
Lancashire  multitudes,  in  his  own  vigorous  and  im- 
passioned language,  that  he  knew  how  deeply  he  was 
indebted  to  the  hard-working  Lancashire  lads  for 
the  position  he  occupied,  and  that  they  never  should 
'  clem  '  as  long  as  he  had  anything  to  share  with 
them,  he  surely  would  have  accomplished  great 
things.  Other  noblemen  and  gentlemen,  less  rich, 
or  less  highly  born,  or  less  eloquent,  would  have  had 
to  follow  in  his  wake ;  if  wise,  they  would  have 
followed  with  a  good  grace,  and  endeavoured  to 
win  back  the  hearts  of  their  fellow-countrymen  by 
imitating  his  example*  I  know  that  this  sounds 
rather  Quixotic,  and  am  perfectly  well  aware  that 
Lord  Derby  performed  his  duty  thoroughly  well  on 
that  occasion.  He  gave  his  suffering  neighbours  his 
money,  his  time,  and  his  thought,  and  duly  earned 
their  gratitude  ;  but  it  was  gratitude  in  a  milder 
form  than  the  imaginative  glow  of  feeling,  which  I 
had  pictured  to  myself  as  within  his  grasp.  In  this 
humdrum  century,  the  spirit  that  founded  monas- 


344  FENIAN  MURDER  IN  MANCHESTER 

teries  and  built  cathedrals,  endowing  them  with  vast 
estates,  is  no  longer  alive  among  us.  Much  good  is 
done,  and  much  excellent  work  got  through,  but  it  is 
got  through  after  a  quieter  fashion,  and  this  upon  the 
whole  is,  I  daresay,  just  as  well ;  still  I  cannot  but 
think,  that  in  this  particular  case,  if  my  idea  had 
caught  fire  in  Lord  Derby's  mind  and  lifted  him  up 
into  action,  though  he  might  not  have  been  quite  as 
rich  at  the  end  of  the  cotton  famine  as  at  the 
beginning,  he  would  have  got  at  least  his  money's 
worth  in  return. 

As  to  the  history  of  the  years  since  1860  I 
have  nothing  to  say  except  what  might  be  said  just 
as  well  by  anybody  else.  I  shall  therefore  only 
glance  at  them  in  passing.  The  first  observation  on 
public  matters  I  have  to  make  is  this.  Mr.  Justin 
McCarthy's  '  History  of  our  own  Times,'  in  spite  of 
his  well-known  Irish  proclivities,  is  written  from  be- 
ginning to  end  fairly  and  impartially.  This  makes  it 
more  important  to  point  out  any  accidental  misconcep- 
tion tending  to  mislead  his  readers,  more  important 
because  the  general  character  of  the  book  would 
naturally  lend  to  such  a  misconception  currency  and 
weight.  Now  in  his  account  of  the  Fenian  rescue 
when  Messrs.  Deasy  and  Kelly  escaped  at  Manchester, 
he  tells  us,  '  in  the  scuffle '  a  policeman  was  killed. 
This  is  not  the  way  to  describe  what,  as  I  have 
always  understood,  was  a  deliberate  murder.  The 
constable  stood  on  guard  over  the  police  van, 
without  weapons.  An  armed  force  surrounded  him, 


POLICEMAN  DIES  AT  HIS  POST  345 

2,  pistol  was  put  to  his  head  with  the  alternative  of 
yielding  up  his  prisoners  or  dying.  He  preferred 
death  to  the  sacrifice  of  duty,  and  was  instantly  shot. 
It  is  not  my  business,  be  it  understood,  to  speak  over 
harshly  of  such  proceedings  ;  the  perpetrators  of  such 
deeds  may  perhaps  be  noble-minded  men,  but  in  order 
to  rank  as  such,  they  and  their  friends  must  accept  the 
hanging,  which  no  Government  that  is  not  eager  towel- 
come  the  triumph  of  anarchy  can  spare  them,  without 
a  murmur.  Unless  each  of  these  blood-stained  patriots 
is  ready  to  give  a  life  for  the  life  he  takes,  he  degrades 
himself  to  the  level  of  an  ordinary  assassin.  To  try 
and  escape  by  lying  afterwards  as  O'Donnell  did 
when  he  killed  Carey  the  informer,  is  simply  to  be- 
have like  a  soldier  who  runs  away  in  the  face  of  the 
enemy.  If  the  Irish,  as  they  tell  us,  are  at  war  with 
England,  they  can  hardly  expect  England  to  remain 
at  peace  with  them,  and  unless  we  mean  to  let  society 
crumble  into  ruins,  law  and  order  must  be  main- 
tained, even  though,  in  the  effort  to  maintain  them, 
we  have  to  bring  to  the  scaffold  men,  whose  motives 
and  characters  may  separate  them  from  the  baseness 
of  a  common  felon.  The  extreme  unreasonableness 
of  the  Irish  Nationalists  on  such  occasions  is  one  of 
their  most  irritating  qualities. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

Elected  Poetry  Professor  at  Oxford — My  lectures  afterwards  pub- 
lished— Mrs.  Siddons  the  younger — The  Moabite  inscription — '  The 
Dream  of  Gerontius' — My  ode  to  Lord  Salisbury — Militant  old 
clergyman — Miss  Austen — her  sad  adventure  in  Switzerland. 

IN  1867,  as  I  said  before,  I  was  elected  Poetry  Pro- 
fessor at  Oxford.  The  holder  of  this  professorship,  I 
think,  ought  to  fill  a  more  important  part  than  he 
does  in  university  life.  He  should  have  a  much  larger 
salary,  do  a  great  deal  more  work,  and  exercise 
jurisdiction  over  wider  provinces  of  criticism  and 
thought.  In  point  of  fact,  as  I  have  always  thought, 
he  should  reside  in  Oxford,  devote  his  whole  time  to 
his  business,  and  be  professor,  not  of  poetry  alone, 
but  of  literature  in  general.  I  do  not  think  I  did  my 
work  ill,  so  far  as  there  was  any  work  to  be  done, 
but  I  always  regretted  that  during  Mr.  Arnold's  ten 
years,  I  had  not  prepared  myself  for  my  duties  by  a 
formal  and  methodical  course  of  studies  in  the  proper 
direction.  The  fact  is  that  the  Bishop  of  Rochester  (I 
had  once  dreamed  of  succeeding  to  him)  retired  from 
his  office  at  the  end  of  the  first  five  years,  thereby 
taking  me  by  surprise.  .Before  I  had  time  to  consider 
the  matter  under  this  new  aspect,  Mr.  Arnold  was  in 
the  .field,  and  I  let  him  walk  over,  but  in  middle  life, 


MY  LECTURES  PUBLISHED  AS  A  MATTER  OF  DUTY    347 

years  glide  away  at  a  great  pace,  and  I  found  Arnold's 
reign  ended  before  I  knew  where  I  was,  then  after 
some  hesitation  I  allowed  the  old  half-forgotten  wish 
to  wake  up  again,  and  offered  myself  as  a  candi- 
date. 

The  lectures  I  published  afterwards  (according 
to  Oxford  rules  I  had  little  choice  about  that)  were,  I 
flatter  myself,  good  of  their  kind.  They  had  always 
been  well  received  in  the  lecture-room,  and  were 
afterwards  welcomed  in  print  by  a  large  majority  of 
my  reviewers  quite  as  kindly  as  they  deserved.  I 
need  not  add  that  the  spiteful  noticer  set  to  work 
after  his  fashion,  treating  me  with  that  magnificent 
contempt  in  which  our  unknown  Aristarchuses  are 
apt  to  indulge  themselves  behind  their  vizors.  The 
form  of  authorship  I  am  referring  to  deserves,  I 
think,  every  discouragement.  From  a  real  criticism, 
however  harsh,  however  unjust  even,  there  is  gene- 
rally something  to  be  learnt ;  not  to  mention  that  if 
you  are  bold  enough  to  disregard  Henry  Taylor's 
famous  apothegm  ('a  controversy  in  the  press, 
with  the  press,  is  the  controversy  of  a  fly  with  a 
spider'),  and  strike  back  at  your  adversary's  weak 
points  as  hard  as  you  can,  you  may  amuse  yourself 
by  getting  up  a  quarrel ;  but  the  anonymous  para- 
graphs so  unpleasantly  familiar  to  most  of  us  who 
write,  besides  being  totally  barren  of  instruction,  are 
as  impalpable  as  the  hum  of  a  mosquito,  so  that 
nothing  is  open  to  us  except  anointing  our  gnat- 
bites  with  the  oil  of  self-complacency,  and  thanking 


348  SELF-SACRIFICING  UNDERGRADUATE 

our  stars   that  a  mosquito,  after  all,  is  not  a  deadly 
serpent,  but  only  a  venomous  insect. 

I  have  said  that  I  was  well  received  in  the  lecture- 
room,  and  this  is  no  more  than  the  truth  ;  but  it 
would  be  uncandid  if  I  did  not  admit  that  I  often 
addressed  myself  to  bonnets  and  frocks,  rather  than 
to  caps  and  gowns  ;  more  than  once,  indeed,  I  might 
almost  have  supposed  myself  Poetry  Professor  to 
Girton  instead  of  at  Oxford.  In  saying  this,  I  do 
not  mean  to  undervalue  myself,  but  merely  to  state 
what  everybody  knows,  that  after  two  o'clock  a 
young  undergraduate  has  something  else  to  do  than 
attend  cut-and-dried  lectures  not  directly  connected 
with  his  degree.  One  of  the  first  boys  I  met,  after 
being  elected,  was  my  young  cousin,  the  late  Sir 
William  Milner ;  he  felt  that  blood  is  thicker  than 
water,  and  that  a  sacrifice  had  to  be  made.  Ac- 
cordingly, he  gathered  himself  together,  and  volun- 
teered a  solemn  promise  (unlocked  for  by  me  I  beg 
to  say)  that  he  would  come  and  listen  to  my  instruc- 
tions once  at  any  rate  during  my  tenure  of  office. 
The  covenant  with  himself  relieved  his  mind,  and  I 
need  hardly  tell  my  readers  that  there  it  stood  until 
he  left  Oxford,  always  about  to  be  fulfilled.  Early 
in  my  career  (my  opening  lecture,  or  rather  speech, 
for  I  aimed  more  at  speaking  than  at  reading  a  formal 
lecture,  had  been  a  success)  I  took  my  son  Everard 
along  with  me  to  deliver  Oration  No.  2.  We  found 
ourselves  in  the  midst  of  a  stream  of  people  all 
steadily  moving  onward  in  the  proper  path,  and  we 


MRS.  SIDDONS — MOABITE  INSCRIPTION          349 

both  of  us,  in  our  simplicity,  believed  that  these  were 
zealous  admirers,  hurrying  to  hear  more  of  the  elo- 
quence that  had  enchanted  them  a  month  or  two 
before.  When  lo  and  behold,  about  fifty  yards  from 
our  goal,  they  one  and  all  swept  down  a  turning  to 
the  left,  and  I  discovered  on  inquiry,  that  young 
Mrs.  Siddons,  about  to  recite  Shakspeare,  was  the 
attraction,  instead  of  the  Professor  of  Poetry.  I  took 
the  place  at  my  desk,  I  must  acknowledge,  somewhat 
crestfallen  for  a  moment. 

On  another  occasion,  the  famous  Moabite  inscrip- 
tion had  to  be  deciphered.  As  soon  as  I  had  finished 
(now  my  handwriting,  though  decidedly  better  than 
Dean  Stanley's,  and  as  good,  I  think,  as  Lord  Hough- 
ton's,  has  never  been  much  esteemed  by  my  friends), 
one  of  them,  accordingly,  glancing  first  at  the  strange 
Semitic  characters  in  the  rear,  and  then  at  the  manu- 
script in  my  hand,  quietly  observed  that  he  thought 
the  hieroglyphics  the  more  legible  of  the  two.  On  one 
occasion,  indeed,  the  hall  where  I  spoke  was  crammed 
thoroughly  full,  there  was  not  even  standing-room, 
but  then  I  accepted  the  compliment  as  it  was  meant,  a 
compliment  not  to  me,  but  to  one  far  greater — the 
subject  I  had  chosen  being  the  *  Dream  of  Gerontius.' 
Still,  without  being  on  the  same  level  with  the  illus- 
trious Cardinal,  one  may  have  something  to  say  to  the 
world,  and  I  do  not  mean  to  withdraw  from  the  state- 
ment I  made  just  now,  that  my  lectures  on  poetry 
are  worth  reading.  During  my  professorship,  I  had 
to  write  an  ode  greeting  Lord  Salisbury  as  our  new 


350  ODE  TO  LORD  SALISBURY 

Chancellor.  Now  I  have  the  highest  possible  respect 
for  Lord  Salisbury,  but  poetry,  unless  perfectly  spon- 
taneous, is  not  likely  to  be  worth  much.  I  think, 
therefore,  that  the  Bishop  of  Rochester  and  Mr.  Arnold 
were  both  of  them  lucky  in  having  escaped  from  this 
somewhat  unattractive  task.  To  me  it  was  specially 
unattractive,  because  I  possessed  no  musical  gifts. 
I  did  what  I  could  by  telling  Sir  Gore  Ouseley,  that  I 
thought  in  such  a  case  the  verses  ought  to  subordi- 
nate themselves  entirely  to  the  accompaniment,  and 
that  any  hints  he  might  give  me  as  to  cadences,  or 
modulation,  or  adjustment  of  letters,  should  be  carefully 
attended  to.  He  was  kind  enough  to  send  me  some 
slight  recommendations,  but  they  were  not  sufficient 
for  my  purpose,  and  when  I  heard  Miss  Edith  Wynne 
struggling  with  difficulties  I  might  have  spared  her, 
I  felt  sorry  that  she  also  had  not  been  consulted. 
The  rhythm,  though  it  might  be  good  enough  as 
verse  rhythm,  seemed  too  hard  and  ringing  to  be 
happily  dealt  with  by  a  musician,  and  I  discerned 
afterwards  that  I  could  have  done  better  if  I  had  put 
myself  more  completely  into  a  state  of  pupilage. 
But  then  I  did  not  know  that  she  would  be  the 
executing  artist,  and  Sir  Gore  Ouseley,  living  away 
from  London,  was  difficult  of  access.  He  did  his 
part,  as  I  understand  from  competent  judges,  excel- 
lently well ;  but  my  stanzas  when  sung,  creaked  a 
little  I  thought,  giving  Miss  Wynne  more  trouble 
than  I  liked. 

During  one   of  the  years  whilst  I  was   at  the 


CONVERSATION  WITH  A  CLERGYMAN          351 

Custom  House,  I  cannot  give  the  exact  date,  I  had  a 
very  strange  conversation  with  an  aged  clergyman 
who  got  into  the  same  railway  carriage  with  me  at 
Dorchester.  He  was  a  very  fine-looking  man,  cer- 
tainly past  eighty,  as  upright  as  a  dart,  and  full  of 
power,  '  his  eye  not  being  dim,  nor  his  natural  force 
abated  ; '  his  manners  were  extremely  courteous,  with 
a  touch  of  the  old  school  about  them,  and  we  speedily 
began  to  talk  to  each  other.  He  launched  out  in 
praise  of  the  younger  divines,  for  their  zeal  and 
devotion  to  duty.  '  I  myself/  he  said,  '  have  long 
been  a  parish  clergyman,  and  till  lately  I  never  per- 
ceived that  I  had  failed  in  the  performance  of  my 
appointed  task,  but  when  I  look  round,  and  see  with 
what  energy  my  younger  neighbours  work,  and  the 
effects  produced  by  that  energy,  I  feel  ashamed  of 
my  own  slackness  and  lukewarmness  in  bygone 
years  ;  and  yet,'  he  added,  '  there  are  one  or  two 
points  as  to  which  the  men  of  to-day  might  learn 
something  from  us  who  belonged  to  an  earlier  genera- 
tion. For  instance,  before  I  went  into  the  Church,  I 
was  an  officer  of  the  13th  Hussars.  When  the  peace 
of  1814  was  concluded,  it  seemed  to  me  that  my 
business  as  a  soldier  had  come  to  an  end,  and  that  I 
had  better  take  up  some  other  profession  in  its  place. 
There  was  a  family  living  ready  to  my  hand,  and 
accordingly  I  took  orders.  Before,  however,  I  passed 
on  to  my  own  rectory,  I  accepted  a  curacy  for  six 
months  in  the  Black  Country.  As  you  may  suppose, 
sir,  whilst  in  the  Hussars  my  life  was  very  much  the 


352  MR.  JACKSON'S  INSTRUCTIONS  TURNED  TO  ACCOUNT 

same  as  the  life  of  other  young  officers.  Among 
other  things,  I  became  a  favourite  pupil  of  the  late 
Mr.  Jackson's  ;  you  have  heard  of  Mr.  Jackson,  sir  ? ' 
Now,  at  Eton,  though  not  equal  to  Shrewsbury  men 
in  the  manipulation  of  Greek  particles,  we  were 
strong  hi  our  knowledge  of  Boxiana,  so  I  answered 
him  without  a  moment's  pause,  '  Of  course  I  have  ; 
why,  he  beat  the  Jew  Mendoza  in  ten  minutes.'  Then 
his  heart  warmed  to  me  at  once,  and  he  replied : 
'  True,  sir,  as  you  observe,  he  beat  the  Jew  Mendoza 
in  ten  minutes  ;  and,  as  I  told  you  just  now,  I  reckon 
myself  to  have  been  his  favourite  pupil.  On  arriving 
at  my  post,  I  found  my  parishioners  in  a  thoroughly 
barbarous  condition.  One  of  their  habits  was,  that 
the  women,  stripped  to  the  waist,  with  their  hair  cut 
short,  had  to  fight  pitched  battles  in  the  public-house, 
their  husbands  giving  them  knees,  according  to  the 
accepted  rites  of  pugilism.  I  resolved  to  put  a  stop 
to  this  practice,  and  a  contest  having  been  arranged 
between  two  renowned  championesses,  I  stepped  into 
the  arena  and  forbade  it.  Upon  this,  the  bully  of  the 
place  turned  upon  me.  '  Very  good/  said  I,  '  off  with 
your  coat.'  No  sooner  said  than  done.  We  took  the 
place  of  the  ladies,  and  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
thanks  to  the  instructions  of  my  friend  Mr.  Jackson, 
I  had  given  him  such  a  thrashing  that  he  kept  his 
bed  for  a  fortnight,  and  troubled  me  no  more.  Then, 
sir,  I  began  to  get  influence  in  my  parish  ;  they  said 
"  the  parson  war  a  mon."  Now  my  eldest  son,  who 
has  lately  taken  my  place,  is  in  most  respects  a  far 


JANE  AUSTEN  353 

better  clergyman  than  I  ever  pretended  to  be,  but 
under  those  particular  circumstances,  he  would  have 
been  in  a  difficulty.'  Of  course,  my  worthy  old 
friend  was  quite  right  in  abolishing  this  female  fight- 
ing ;  still,  in  our  wife-beating  days,  a  little  of  Mr. 
Jackson's  science  might  not  be  absolutely  thrown 
away  upon  the  gentler  sex.  A  sober  woman  might 
then  have  some  chance  of  thrashing  a  drunken  man, 
and  of  counter-hitting  him  into  peace  and  quietness, 
through  a  series  of  well-deserved  black  eyes.  There 
is  no  chance  of  that  now.  As  I  observed  in  a  former 
chapter  with  reference  to  more  serious  matters,  such 
as  Catholic  emancipation  and  the  like,  these  im- 
provements are  no  doubt  advantageous  on  the  whole, 
but  yet  they  have  their  drawbacks — drawbacks  not 
sufficiently  foreseen  and  considered  beforehand. 

As  I  refer  here  to  a  clergyman  of  the  old  type, 
and  have  just  been  looking  at  Lord  Brabourne's 
'  Life  and  Letters  of  Jane  Austen,'  the  great  literary 
artist  to  whom  we  are  indebted,  among  other  things, 
for  a  gallery  of  those  clerical  portraits,  destined  to 
last  as  long  as  the  English  language,  I  may  as  well 
take  this  opportunity  of  discussing  her  merits.  I 
am  one  of  the  regular  Austen  vassals,  and  consider 
her  as  without  a  rival  among  English  writers,  in 
her  own  line  and  within  her  own  limits.  I  should 
not  say,  as  Macaulay  says,  that  she  ranks  next  to 
Shakspeare,  any  more  than  I  should  put  a  first-rate 
miniature  painter  on  the  same  level  with  Raphael  or 
Titian.  It  is  enough  for  me  that  she  stands  alone  as 


354        'PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE '— ' PERSUASION ' 

a  first-rate  miniature  painter  in  her  own  particular 
school  of  design. 

When  Lord  Brabourne  picks  out  *  Pride  and 
Prejudice '  as  her  best  piece  of  work,  he  must  excuse 
me  for  differing  from  him.  If  he  had  said  it  was 
likely  to  amuse  ordinary  novel  readers  more  than 
*  Persuasion,'  or  '  Mansfield  Park/  or  '  Northanger 
Abbey,'  well  and  good.  But  to  my  mind,  it  is  not 
equal  to  any  one  of  those  three  works,  if  we  are  on  the 
look  out  for  her  special  excellences  ;  I  mean  exquisite- 
ness  of  finish,  delicacy  of  humour,  and  sureness  of 
touch.  Lady  Catherine  de  Burgh  is  a  caricature,  Sir 
William  Lucas  is  a  caricature,  nay  Mr.  Collins  him- 
self, full  of  glorious  humour  as  the  sketch  of  him 
is,  still  seems  to  me  something  of  a  caricature.  Yes, 
and  worse  than  this,  Elizabeth  Bennet,  the  heroine, 
is  more  than  once,  without  the  authoress  intending 
anything  of  the  kind,  pert  and  vulgar,  an  accusation 
which  no  one  would  dream  of  bringing  against  Anne 
Elliot  in  '  Persuasion,'  Fanny  Price  in  '  Mansfield 
Park,'  or  Catherine  Morland  in  '  Northanger  Abbey.' 
My  belief  is  that  Jane  Austen,  disappointed  at  the 
poor  success  of  *  Northanger  Abbey,'  abandoned  her 
own  natural  manner  in  '  Pride  and  Prejudice,'  and 
tried  to  catch  the  public  eye  by  the  adoption  of  a 
broader  style  of  drawing,  and  more  decided  colours. 
I  am  far  from  saying  that  we  gain  nothing  by  this 
effort  of  hers,  but  we  also  lose  something,  and  what 
we  lose  is  some  of  that  peculiar  quality  distinguish- 
ing her  from  all  other  novelists.  To  me,  '  Persua- 


PORTRAIT  OF  HERSELF— HER  JOURNEY  ABROAD   355 

sion '  is  the  most  beautiful  and  the  most  interesting 
of  her  stories.  Especially  do  I  think  it  the  most 
interesting,  because  it  contains,  unless  I  am  mistaken, 
more  of  herself,  more  of  her  own  feelings,  hopes,  and 
recollections,  than  the  rest  of  her  books  put  together. 
And  this  brings  me  to  my  main  reason  for  touching 
upon  Miss  Austen  at  all,  since  as  an  authoress  she 
needs  no  help  or  recommendation  from  anyone.  If 
you  draw  your  inference  from  what  she  has  written, 
you  would  suppose  she  had  never  been  out  of  Eng- 
land, but  so  far  from  this  being  the  case,  unless  my 
informant  made  a  most  unaccountable  blunder,  the 
one  romance  belonging  to  her  brief  career,  the  one 
event  which  darkened,  and  possibly  shortened  her 
life,  took  place  after  the  peace  of  1802,  and  took  place 
in  Switzerland. 

A  friend  of  mine,  Miss  Ursula  Mayow,  being  on  a 
visit  at  a  country  house  in  the  Austen  district,  was 
taken  to  an  afternoon  party  by  her  friends.  Whilst 
there,  some  of  the  guests  began  to  talk  of  Mrs. 
Gaskell's  '  Cranford,'  then  just  published,  and  a  voice 
was  heard  in  the  distance  saying  this  :  *  Yes,  I  like 
it  very  much  ;  it  reminds  me  of  my  Aunt  Jane.'  To 
Miss  Mayow,  a  devoted  Austenite,  there  could  be  no 
doubt  who  was  meant  by  *  my  Aunt  Jane/  and 
accordingly  she  went  as  soon  as  she  could  and  intro- 
duced herself  to  the  speaker.  This  was  the  story  told 
her,  and  if  it  be  true,  why  Mr.  Austen  Leigh  and 
Lord  Brabourne  say  nothing,  and  apparently  knew 
nothing  about  it,  I  cannot  explain.  Mr.  Austen, 


356  CAPTAIN  WENTWORTH  IN  REAL  LIFE 

accompanied  by  his  two  daughters,  Cassandra  and 
Jane,  took  advantage  of  the  long  delayed  peace  to 
undertake  a  foreign  tour.  Whilst  in  Switzerland 
they  fell  in  with  a  young  naval  officer,  the  Captain 
Wentworth  we  may  assume,  afterwards  delineated 
with  such  tenderness  and  skill  hi  the  novel  of '  Per- 
suasion,' a  novel  not  given  to  the  world  till  after  her 
death.  This  course  of  true  love  ran  perfectly  smooth, 
and  but  for  the  cruelty  of  fate,  Jane  Austen's  career 
would  probably  have  been  altogether  a  different  one, 
happier  perhaps  for  herself,  if  less  important  to  the 
world.  But  before  the  arrangements  for  this  marriage 
were  taken  in  hand,  so  at  least  in  their  blindness 
Jane  and  her  lover  imagined,  a  momentary  separation 
was  agreed  upon  between  them.  Mr.  Austen  and 
his  daughters  settled  for  themselves,  that  whilst  their 
friend  enjoyed  himself  in  climbing  mountains,  and 
threading  difficult  passes,  they  would  jog  on  to 
Chamouni,  and  wait  quietly  there  till  he  rejoined 
them.  This  was  done,  but  they  did  not  find  him  on 
their  arrival,  nor  did  any  tidings  of  his  whereabouts 
reach  them.  Anxiety  passed  into  alarm,  and  alarm 
into  sickening  terror  ;  then  at  last,  just  as  the  Austens 
were  about  to  return  home,  full  of  the  gloomiest 
apprehensions,  the  fatal  message  they  had  been  ex- 
pecting came  to  them  from  a  remote  mountain  village. 
Jane's  lover  had  over- walked  and  over-tasked  him- 
self. After  a  short  illness  he  died  of  brain  fever,  but  he 
had  j  ust  managed,  before  his  senses  left  him,  to  pre- 
pare a  message  for  the  Austens  to  tell  them  of  his 


MISS  AUSTEN'S  SUBSEQUENT  LIFE  357 

coming  end.  They  returned  to  England,  and  accord- 
ing to  the  narrator,  '  Aunt  Jane '  resumed  her  ordi- 
nary life  as  the  rector's  daughter,  never  recurring  to 
her  adventures  abroad.  She  seems  as  it  were  to  have 
turned  a  key  on  the  incidents  of  that  year,  and  shut 
them  away  from  her  for  ever.  She  had  a  desk  which 
her  niece  promised  to  show  to  Miss  Mayow,  if  she 
would  come  over  to  their  house,  and  to  this  desk 
1  Aunt  Jane  '  retired  whenever  the  work  of  the  parish 
left  her  any  leisure,  and  wrote  a  letter  or  a  chapter 
in  a  novel  as  the  case  might  be.  This  story  lends  a 
great  charm  to  '  Persuasion.'  When  we  think  of  this 
woman  of  genius,  at  once  delicate  and  strong,  who 
had  determined  to  live  a  life  of  duty  and  patient 
submission  to  the  inevitable,  unlocking  her  heart 
once  more  as  she  felt  the  approach  of  death,  and  call- 
ing back  to  cheer  her  last  moments  those  recollec- 
tions which  she  had  thought  it  her  duty  to  put  aside, 
w^hilst  there  was  yet  work  to  do  on  earth,  we  are 
drawn  to  her  by  a  new  impulse,  which  heightens 
our  admiration,  and  warms  it  into  a  real  personal 
affection. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

Origin  of  the  Doyle  family — William  Doyle,  the  wit — My  great-uncle 
— Sir  John  Doyle — His  fine  qualities — Peroration  of  a  speech  of 
his — My  grandfather's  remarkable  power  over  his  soldiers — The 
quick  march  of  the  14th  Regiment — Poem  on  the  subject — My 
father — My  uncle,  Charles  Joseph — Stories  of  the  Peninsular  War. 

I  NOW  proceed,  as  I  promised,  to  give  some  account 
of  my  family,  and  certain  members  of  it  whose  lives  I 
think  worth  commemorating. 

Though  every  member  of  the  sept  now,  I  fancy, 
calls  himself  Doyle,  this  does  not  seem  always  to  have 
been  the  case.  There  are  several  traditions  connect- 
ing us  with  ancient  Irish  champions,  long  before  the 
Norman  conquest  of  Ireland,  but  I  am  not  sufficiently 
familiar  with  the  old  Erse  annals  to  choose  between 
them,  nor  has  anyone  been  able  to  explain  to  me  how, 
why,  or  when  the  Celtic  title  of  a  very  numerous 
clan  dropped  away  from  it,  to  be  replaced  by  a  name 
practically  identical  with  that  of  the  ancient  Norman 
house  of  d'Oyley,  whose  armorial  bearings,  moreover, 
seem  also  to  have  been  ours,  at  latest  from  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth.  Indeed,  in  that  respect  we  appear  to 
have  been  '  plus  Royalistes  que  le  Roi,'  unless  my 
old  great-uncle,  Sir  John,  was  mistaken,1  when  he 

1  I  do  not  think  he  could  have  been,  as  he  was  anything  but  pleased 
to  have  his  faith  shaken  in  the  old  family  traditions. 


D'OYLEY  ARMS  IN  NORMANDY— WICKLOW  ORIGIN  359 

stated  that  lie  found  our  bordure  or  and  azure  in 
Norman  Chapels,  as  borne  by  the  French  D'oyleys, 
though  their  English  descendants  had  abandoned  it. 

At  any  rate,  the  Doyles  were  settled  hi  Wicklow 
from  an  early  period.  Spreading  from  Wicklow  over 
Wexford,  Carlow,  and  Kilkenny,  *  they  developed  into 
several  wealthy  and  powerful  families.' l  Wealth  and 
power,  however,  did  not,  for  most  of  them,  outlive 
James  I.'s  plantation  of  Ulster,  in  1616.  This  move- 
ment, if  it  were  a  plantation  from  one  point  of  view, 
was  from  the  other  a  very  decisive  and  violent  uproot- 
ing, and  among  the  Irish  gentlemen  who  suffered 
from  it,  several  Doyles  are  to  be  found.  The  head 
of  my  particular  family,  however,  escaped  James  I., 
but  only  to  be  crushed  by  Cromwell.  Denis  Doyle, 
Governor  of  Fort  Chichester,  <and  a  large  land-owner 
in  Wexford,  died  about  1625  ;  his  sister,  Grace  Doyle, 
soon  followed  him  to  the  grave.  William  Doyle,  my 
great-grandfather's  great-grandfather,  administered 
their  personal  property  as  next  of  kin  (prorsus  consan- 
guineus)  and  succeeded  to  the  Wexford  estates  as  heir- 
at-law  in  1627  ;  but  in  1653  these  estates  were  taken 
away  from  him,  and  handed  over  to  an  English  family 
of  the  name  of  Thornhill.  He  must  have  been  an  old 
man  in  1653,  and  probably  did  not  survive  his  ruin 
long.  His  son,  James  Doyle,  was  evidently  an  able 
man,  for  he  set  the  family  on  its  legs  again.  He  passed 
from  Wexford  into  Carlow,  obtained  there  in  1676, 
from  the  Bagenalls,  a  property  called  Kilconney,  and 

1  Debrett's  Baronetage,  1819. 
24 


360  JAMES  DOYLE 

died  in  1708,  being,  according  to  his  record,  '  of  a 
great  age.'  Of  course  it  sounds  rather  pathetic  to 
think  of  lands  violently  torn  from  your  forefathers, 
and  remaining  in  the  hands  of  aliens,  but  when  the 
event  happened  two  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago,  a 
philosopher  may  say  to  himself,  first,  do  I  agree  with 
Sophocles  ?  when  he  tells  us  — 

fir)  <f)vvai  TOV  airavra 
Xoyov  '  TO  8',  cTret  fav 
fiijva.1  KfWev,  odev  irtp 
iroXu  8fvrcpov  ws 


Not  to  be  born  at  all,  for  men 
Is  the  one  triumph  truly  great  ; 
But  if  we  must  touch  life,  why  then 
Next  to  it,  far  the  happiest  fate 
Is,  that  we  swiftly  pass  agen, 
Back  to  the  silence  left  of  late. 

Secondly,  do  I  agree  with  Solomon  ?  when  he 
preaches  to  us,  '  Yea,  better  is  he  that  hath  not  been, 
who  hath  not  seen  the  evil  work  that  is  done  under  the 
sun  ?  '  If  I  do,  then  these  confiscations  of  1653  were  a 
real  misfortune  to  me,  because,  but  for  them,  the  family 
circumstances  would  have  shaped  themselves  other- 
wise, the  family  alliances  would  no  doubt  have  been 
different,  and  the  Francis  Doyle,  if  there  were  a  Francis 
Doyle  of  1885,  though  perhaps  the  best  of  men,  would 
yet  be  somebody  else,  not  me  !  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  I  prefer  my  real  personality  to  his  imaginary 
one,  and  being  to  non-existence,  I  have  no  reason  to 
nurse  a  grudge  against  Cromwell.  I  cite  the  utter- 
ances of  the  sage  and  the  poet  the  more  readily  as  I 


O'SOLOMON  AND  O'SOPHOCLES— WILLIAM  DOYLE   361 

am  dealing  with  an  Irish  question  ;  and  the  statement 
above  (it  is  practically  one  statement)  is  an  absolute 
Irish  bull.  The  sentence  that  a  man  is  the  better  for 
never  having  been  born,  '  sic  tauriformis  volvitur,' 
that  I  should  scarcely  be  surprised  if  it  were  dis- 
covered on  some  old  commentator's  manuscript,  that 
the  real  names  of  the  moralist  and  the  playwright 
were,  respectively,  0' Solomon  and  O' Sophocles. 

James  Doyle  I  apprehend  to  have  been  the  first 
Protestant  in  the  family ;  indeed,  there  is  a  legend 
among  us  that  his  mother  or  grandmother,  Lady  Lind- 
say, a  Scotch  widow,  converted  us  to  Protestantism. 
Anyhow,  towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
his  son,  William  Doyle  the  second,  of  Cloughmony, 
was  a  prosperous  gentleman  enough.  He  left  a  son 
Charles — known  to  fame  among  his  contemporaries  as 
'  the  long-headed  man' — an  epithet  indicating,perhaps, 
a  certain  Scottishness  in  his  composition.  His  son, 
the  third  William,  was  supposed  to  be  one  of  the 
most  brilliant,  if  not  the  most  brilliant  Irishman  of  his 
time  across  a  dinner-table.  In  financial  matters,  how- 
ever, so  far  from  resembling  his  father,  he  was  a  sin- 
gularly short-headed  man,  and  spent  everything  that 
he  had  long  before  his  death  ;  so  that,  for  the  last 
hundred  years  or  so,  we  Doyles  have  escaped  all 
difficulties  about  rents  (rents  to  be  received,  I  mean) 
and  have  run  no  danger  of  being  Boycotted  or  shot 
at  from  behind  a  hedge,  as  oppressors  and  landlords. 
I  recollect  hearing  from  my  father  that,  in  his  youth, 
he  met  Sheridan  at  a  supper-party,  given,  I  think, 


362  WILLIAM  DOYLE  AND   SHERIDAN 

by  the  first  Marquis  of  Hastings.  The  well-known 
Curran  was  one  of  the  company.  As  several  of  the 
guests  were  walking  away  together,  Curran  remarked 
of  the  lion  of  the  evening,  '  Yes,  he  is  an  agreeable 
man,  a  very  agreeable  man,  but  he  would  have  been 
a  child  in  Willie  Doyle's  hands.'  This  is  obviously 
an  exaggeration,  it  may  be  added,  an  after- supper 
exaggeration ;  still,  we  cannot  suppose  that  a  man 
like  Curran  would  have  ventured  upon  this  daring 
statement,  without  something  like  a  reason  behind  it. 
We  may,  therefore,  conclude  that  William  Doyle's 
Irish  reputation  was  not  undeserved.  Only  two 
witticisms  that  I  know  of  have  survived  him ;  but 
the  first  of  them  is  enough  to  show  that  his  humour 
was  subtle,  keen,  and  also  absolutely  his  own.  As 
soon  as  he  had  ruined  himself,  it  naturally  became 
the  duty  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  and  other  people  of 
influence  in  Dublin,  to  provide  so  delightful  a  diner- 
out,  at  any  rate  for  a  time,  with  the  means  of  living,  and 
accordingly,  he  at  once  obtained  some  lucrative  legal 
office  ;  a  Mastership  in  the  Irish  Court  of  Chancery, 
I  believe.  His  predecessor,  who  had  either  retired,  or 
been  promoted  elsewhere,  was  a  gentleman  called 
Ord.  For  some  reason,  or  for  no  reason,  William 
Doyle  disliked  him  particularly.  At  the  dinner 
inevitably  given  to  celebrate  his  accession  to  this 
very  convenient  post,  numerous  toasts  went  round  as 
a  matter  of  course,  and  it  became  his  duty  to  propose 
the  health  of  the  very  person  who  had  made  room 
for  him.  This  he  was  determined  not  to  do.  The 


AN  ECHO— THE  PROVOST'S  BALL  363 

pressure  upon  him  therefore  soon  grew  very  strong, 
and  utterances  from  every  corner  of  the  table  came 
pouring  in.  '  Come,  Doyle,  give  Ord  ;  you  must  give 
Ord,  you  cant  give  any  man  but  Ord?  He  caught 
at  this  last  phrase  as  a  cricketer,  fielding  at  point, 
snaps  up  the  ball  cut  to  him,  and  turning  blandly 
round  upon  his  advisers,  replied,  '  I  am  my  friends' 
echo  ;  any  man  but  Ord  ! '  The  other  joke,  though 
it  sparkles  pleasantly  enough,  is  more  commonplace, 
and  certainly  would  not  have  required  a  Sheridan  to 
give  expression  to  it ;  indeed,  I  should  hardly  have 
thought  the  pun  worth  repeating,  had  it  not  con- 
nected itself  with  one  of  those  Irish  traits  of  character 
which  distinguish  Paddy  from  John  Bull  in  so 
decisive  a  manner.  William  Doyle  and  Provost 
Hutchinson,  though  personal  friends  both  before  and 
after  the  dispute,  blundered  into  a  political  dispute, 
and  a  duel  was  arranged  between  them.  My  great- 
uncle's  second,  on  calling  to  pick  him  up,  thought 
that  his  clothes  looked  smarter  than  usual,  and  made 
a  remark  to  that  effect.  '  Well,'  retorted  his  principal, 
*  I  could  hardly  help  dressing  for  the  Provost's  ball ! ' 
He  had,  moreover,  an  attack  of  gout  upon  him  at  tjie 
time,  and  was  carried  to  the  ground  in  a  sedan-chair. 
On  meeting  his  antagonist,  he  paid  the  chairmen,  and 
told  them  to  move  off  to  a  distance.  Not  a  bit  of  it, 
they  insisted  on  sticking  to  their  client,  and  remained 
close  by  him  on  different  sides  whilst  the  shots  were 
being  exchanged.  They  would  obviously  have  lost 
caste  among  their  fellows  had  they  consulted  their 


864    MR.  RUTHVEN  AND  THE  LORD  MAYOR  OF  DUBLIN 

own  personal  safety  on  such  an  occasion.  This 
brings  back  to  my  recollection  another  incident  of 
the  same  sort.  When  Ruthven,  one  of  O'Connell's 
adherents,  and  the  Tory  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin 
fired  three  shots  apiece  at  each  other,  the  editor  of 
O'Connell's  newspaper,  after  elaborately  proving  that 
Ruthven  was  in  the  right,  and  the  Lord  Mayor  in 
the  wrong,  found  himself  compelled,  on  Irish  prin- 
ciples, even  then  to  praise  his  Tory  antagonist.  He 
said,  '  It  must  be  acknowledged  on  all  hands  (an 
expressive  phrase,  covering,  I  suppose,  nuns,  arch- 
deacons, quakers,  Mr.  Bright,  and  other  peace-at-any- 
price  members  of  Parliament)  that  the  Lord  Mayor 
of  Dublin  deserves  the  highest  honour  for  having 
refused  to  shelter  himself  under  his  official  position.' 
I  think  the  writer  of  this  paragraph  ought  to  have 
been  elected  an  honorary  member  of  the  Society  of 
Dublin  Chairmen. 

In  spite,  however,  of  William's  brilliant  power 
of  conversation  and  great  social  popularity,  his  two 
brothers,  my  great-uncle,  Sir  John,  and  my  grand- 
father, Welbore  Ellis  Doyle,  were  predecessors  in 
whom  their  descendants  may  take,  I  think,  a  more 
legitimate  pride.  Seven  children — six  sons  and  a 
daughter — had  been  born  to  Charles  Doyle  from  his 
marriage  with  Miss  Milley.  The  one  daughter, 
Catherine,  deriving  her  name,  as  did  also  the  second 
eon,  Dunbar,  from  their  great-grandmother,  Catherine 
Dunbar,  became,  as  Mrs.  Bushe,  the  mother  of  the 
famous  Chief  Justice.  John  and  my  grandfather 


SIR  JOHN  DOYLE'S  CAREER  365 

were  much  younger  than  the  other  members  of  the 
family,  and  were  left  pretty  much  to  themselves 
(when  their  father  died  in  1769),  at  the  ages  of  nine- 
teen and  fourteen  respectively.  They  both  of  them, 
in  my  opinion,  are  men  who  deserve  to  be  com- 
memorated. General  Sir  John  Doyle,  my  great- 
uncle,  was  born  in  1750  ;  he  died  full  of  years,  but 
with  all  his  faculties  unimpaired,  when  upwards  of 
eighty-four.  He  was  distinguished  in  many  ways ; 
a  thoroughly  good  soldier,  an  admirable  parliamentary 
speaker,  witty,  genial,  and  of  a  most  gracious  dispo- 
sition. He  possessed,  moreover,  hi  addition  to  these 
qualities,  a  power  of  guiding  and  influencing  others, 
which,  with  ampler  opportunities,  might,  perhaps, 
have  justified  us  in  thinking  him  a  great  man.  As 
it  is,  we  must  content  ourselves  with  saying  that, 
within  his  own  limits,  he  passed  through  life  as  a 
thoroughly  successful  one.  Sir  John  Doyle,  as  a 
soldier,  served  his  country  well ;  but  he  served  in 
America  and  in  the  Low  Countries,  in  the  first  Revo- 
lutionary war  and  in  Egypt.  Hence,  what  he  did 
was  naturally  thrown  into  the  shade  and  eclipsed  by 
the  Peninsular  and  Waterloo  campaigns.  But  the 
eloquent  speeches  he  made  in  the  Dublin  Parliament, 
the  efficient  manner  in  which  he  conducted  the  Irish 
War  Department  under  Lord  Fitz-William,  and, 
indeed,  under  his  successor,  who  would  not  let  him 
go,  though  he  refused  to  modify  his  political  opinions  ; 
the  rapid  success  with  which  he  raised  and  organised 
the  87th  Regiment  in  Kilkenny  and  the  neighbouring 


366  HIS  INFLUENCE  IN  GUEKNSEY 

counties,  where  his  name  is  yet  remembered  with 
affection  ;  the  tact  and  skill  shown  by  him  in  winning 
over  the  people  of  Guernsey,  during  those  critical 
years,  to  accept  new  taxes  at  his  request,  in  spite  of 
the  serious  expenses  incurred  to  complete  his  system 
of  military  roadmaking,  and,  indeed,  to  do  every- 
thing he  asked  them,  all  combined  to  prove  that  he 
was  a  man  of  remarkable  character,  as  well  as  of 
great  and  varied  abilities. 

A  curious  instance  how  he  is  still  held  in  honour 
by  the  Channel  Islanders  came  under  my  notice  not 
so  many  years  ago.  Whilst  I  was  staying  there  on  a 
visit,  an  old  lady  wrote  to  me,  stating  that  her 
Chaumontelle  pears  were  the  pride  of  the  island,  that 
she  never  sold  them  at  a  lower  price  than  5/.  per 
hundred,  but  to  me,  as  '  le  neveu  de  mon  oncle/  she 
was  ready  to  let  the  hundred  go  at  a  pound  less ! 
Of  course  I  felt  deeply  grateful  for  her  kindness, 
but,  as  a  benighted  stranger,  I  fancied  that  even  the 
insignificant  sum  of  tenpence  was  a  startling  sum  to 
pay  for  a  single  pear,  and  I  evaded  the  offer  as  politely 
as  I  could.  Sir  John,  in  addition  to  more  serious 
qualities,  had  his  own  share  of  wit  and  humour.  If 
not  equal  to  that  of  his  elder  brother,  it  was  still 
very  considerable,  and  many  good  sayings  of  his  are 
recorded.  One  of  his  retorts  in  an  Irish  debate 
always  struck  me  as  being  exceedingly  happy.  A 
Liberal  politician — I  forget  his  name — had  gone  over 
to  the  other  side,  and  had  been  rewarded  for  his 
opportune  apostasy  by  office.  Sir  John  attacked 


GOOD  SAYINGS— SPEECH  'IN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  367 

him  in  a  speech  full  of  sarcastic  banter — what,  I 
suppose,  would  now  be  called  *  chaff.'  The  victim 
answered,  quite  correctly  according  to  the  dictates  of 
Aristotle's  Rhetoric,  in  a  very  solemn  tone  :  '  My 
gallant  and  honourable  friend  is,  I  know,  well  versed 
in  the  classics  ;  these  are  not  times  for  so  light  and 
flippant  a  style,  and  I  must  beg  of  him  to  remember 
that  wise  maxim,  "  Dulce  est  desipere  in  loco."  Sir 
John  jumped  up  at  once,  quite  out  of  order,  I  dare 
say,  and  retaliated  as  follows  :  '  I  am  very  much 
obliged  to  my  right  honourable  friend  for  his  classical 
quotation,  and  beg  to  return  it  to  him  with  a  literal 
construe ;  Dulce  est,  it  is  pleasant ;  desipere,  to 
make  a  fool  of  oneself;  in  loco,  in  place.1 

The  peroration  to  one  of  his  speeches,  which  has 
been  preserved,  seems  to  me  so  good,  that,  as  it  is  not 
very  long,  I  shall  transcribe  it.  There  was  an  esta- 
blishment in  Ireland  for  the  relief  of  worn-out  and 
disabled  soldiers,  similar  to  our  establishment  at 
Chelsea,  but  with  only  half  the  Chelsea  allowance  ;  it 
was  also  subject  to  many  other  disadvantages  which 
Sir  John  sought,  and  sought  with  success,  to  remove. 
He  was  highly  applauded  throughout,  but  the  pas- 
sage I  am  about  to  quote  fairly  carried  away  the 
House.  In  pleading  the  cause  of  the  Irish  veterans 
he  adduced  many  instances  of  fidelity  and  zeal.  In 
so  doing  he  told  the  following  story  of  a  corporal  of 
Dragoons,  the  interest  of  which,  as  it  appears  to  me, 
no  time  can  diminish  : 

*  Another  brilliant  example  of  devotion  to  duty 


368  NOBLE  SELF-DEVOTION  TO  DUTY 

flashes  across  my  mind.  When  Lord  Rawdon  was  in 
South  Carolina  he  had  to  send  an  express  of  great 
importance  through  a  country  filled  with  the  enemy's 
troops.  A  corporal  of  the  17th  Dragoons  known  for 
his  courage  and  intelligence  was  selected  to  escort  it. 
They  had  not  proceeded  far  when  they  were  fired  upon, 
the  express  killed,  and  the  corporal  wounded  in  the 
side.  Careless  of  his  wound,  he  thought  but  of  his 
duty  ;  he  snatched  the  despatch  from  the  dying  man 
and  rode  on,  till,  from  the  loss  of  blood,  he  fell,  when, 
fearing  the  despatch  would  be  taken  by  his  enemy,  he 
thrust  it  into  his  wound  until  the  wound  closed  upon 
it  and  concealed  it.  He  was  found  next  day  by  a 
British  patrol,  with  a  smile  of  honourable  pride  upon 
his  countenance,  and  with  life  just  sufficient  to  point 
to  the  fatal  depository  of  his  secret.  In  searching  the 
body  was  found  the  cause  of  his  death,  for  the  surgeon 
declared  that  the  wound  in  itself  was  not  mortal,  but 
rendered  so  by  the  irritation  of  the  paper.  Thus  fell 
this  patriot  soldier — in  rank  a  corporal,  he  was  in 
mind  a  hero.  His  name  was  O'Lavery,  from  the  parish 
of  Moira  in  County  Down.  Whilst  Memory  holds 
her  seat,  the  devotion  of  this  generous  victim  to  his  own 
sense  of  duty  shall  be  present  to  my  mind.  I  would 
not  for  worlds  have  lost  that  name !  How  it  would 
have  lived  in  Greek  or  Roman  story  !  Not  the 
Spartan  hero  of  Thermopylae  not  the  Roman  Curtius, 
in  their  self-devotion  went  beyond  him.  Leonidas 
fought  in  the  presence  of  a  grateful  country — he  was 
in  a  strange  land,  unseen  ;  Curtius  had  all  Rome  for 


SKILFUL  SPEECH  IN  GUEKNSEY  369 

his  spectators — O'Lavery  gave  himself  up  to  death 
alone  in  a  desert.  He  adopted  the  sentiment  without 
knowing  the  language,  and  chose  for  his  epitaph, 
"  Dulce  et  decorum  est  pro  patria  mori !  " 

The  success  of  Sir  John's  exertions  on  this  occa- 
sion was  complete,  and  established  him  in  public 
opinion  as  a  speaker  of  the  highest  promise.  This 
promise  he  afterwards  fulfilled ;  but  in  1793  the 
war  called  him  back  to  his  original  profession.  He 
offered  his  services  to  Government,  undertaking  to 
raise  a  regiment  of  his  countrymen.  In  spite  of  his 
being  so  well  known  as  a  Liberal  politician,  Mr. 
Dundas  accepted  his  offer,  and  the  87th  regiment  was 
accordingly  raised.  Active  service  then  occupied  him 
until  after  the  Union  had  taken  place,  and  he  never, 
that  I  know  of,  tried  to  enter  the  Imperial  Parliament. 
But  that  he  did  not  lose  his  power  of  speaking  by 
disuse,  his  address  to  the  Guernsey  representatives 
(when  in  1804  he  persuaded  them  to  make  his  roads) 
which  is  a  consummate  piece  of  advocacy,  sufficiently 
proves.  Altogether,  I  think  him,  and  I  hope  my 
readers  will  agree  with  me,  a  great-uncle  to  be  proud 
of.  My  grandfather,  Welbore  Ellis  Doyle,  though 
some  years  younger  than  Sir  John,  was  his  senior  in 
the  service.  Sir  John  had  at  first  been  intended  for  the 
Bar,  and  this,  of  course,  threw  him  back  as  a  soldier. 
He  was  a  man  of  a  different  type  from  his  elder 
brother — scarcely  as  amiable,  and  with  less  of  what 
is  commonly  called  talent ;  but  he  possessed  immense 
force  of  character,  and  a  gift  of  dominating  others, 


370    MY  GRANDFATHER  A  GOOD  SOLDIER— 'QA  IRA!' 

which,  as  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  human  powers,  so 
it  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  to  understand  or  ex- 
plain. He  died  in  the  vigour  of  life  as  Governor  of 
Ceylon.  The  mountain  centres  of  that  island  were 
still  under  the  rule  of  the  kings  of  Kandy,  so  that  all 
Europeans  were  confined  to  the  unhealthy  districts  of 
the  coast ;  and  this  proved  fatal  to  him.  Had  it  not 
been  for  his  untimely  death,  his  extraordinary  per- 
sonal qualities  must  have  secured  him  the  highest  dis- 
tinction ;  as  it  is,  he  has  left  a  mark  upon  the  British 
Army,  which  though  trifling  in  itself,  ought  yet, 
among  brother-soldiers,  to  keep  his  name  alive.  To 
him  it  is  owing  that  the  revolutionary  tune,  '  Qa 
ira'  has  remained  to  the  14th  regiment  since  1793  as 
their  chosen  quick  march.  At  the  battle  of  Famars, 
in  that  year,  the  French  attacked  so  fiercely  that  his 
regiment  wavered  for  a  moment.  The  revolutionary 
fever,  in  truth,  blazed  forth  as  a  new  element  in  war, 
and  everywhere  the  discipline  learnt  under  average 
drill-sergeants  was  at  a  loss  how  to  meet  it.  He, 
however,  was  not  at  a  loss  ;  for,  dashing  to  the  front, 
he  called  out  in  a  loud  voice  '  Come  along,  my  lads, 
let's  break  these  scoundrels  to  their  own  damned 
tune.  Drummers,  strike  up  "  Qa  ira ! "  The  effect  was 
irresistible,  and  the  enemy  found  themselves  running 
away  (it  was  an  Irish  exploit,  and  a  bull  is  excusable) 
before  they  could  look  round.  Again,  at  the  siege  of 
Valenciennes  a  redoubt  had  to  be  stormed,  and  he  was 
selected  to  storm  it.  He  called  his  men  together,  and 
addressed  them  thus  :  '  My  lads,  the  general  in  com- 


STORMING  A  REDOUBT  371 

mand  has  done  us  a  great  honour.  \Ve  have  been 
selected  to  perform  an  important,  and,  I  will  not 
disguise  from  you,  a  dangerous  duty.  We  have  to 
carry  yonder  redoubt,  said  to  be  mined  underneath  ; 
we  must  carry  it,  therefore,  in  such  a  fashion  that 
the  enemy  may  not  have  time,  as  he  retires,  to  blow 
us  and  it  up  together.  I  want  a  hundred  of  you  to 
follow  me  there — volunteers,  ground  your  arms ! ' 
The  whole  regiment  grounded  them  at  once,  as  if  by 
the  action  of  a  single  will.  '  Very  good/  continued  the 
colonel,  'then  I'll  take  the  hundred  next  for  duty.' 
And  with  that  hundred  next  for  duty,  the  redoubt 
was  so  rapidly  stormed  that  the  enemy  had  no  tune 
to  explode  their  mine.  His  last  recorded  interview 
with  his  favourite  regiment  is  not  less  remarkable, 
and  shows  how  long  a  noble  strength  of  mind  retains 
its  power  over  those  who  submit  to  it,  not  as  slaves 
but  as  freemen,  because  it  is  noble.  The  14th  regi- 
ment, some  years  after  he  had  left  it,  being  under 
orders  for  India,  mutinied  on  the  beach  of  South- 
ampton, where  my  grandfather  was  then  military 
governor,  and  positively  refused  to  embark.  I  have 
heard  from  the  description  of  an  eye-witness  how  the 
general  (he  was  then  a  general)  received  the  news. 
Seizing  the  excited  messenger  by  the  collar,  he  swung 
him  out  of  the  saddle,  and,  jumping  on  his  horse, 
galloped  down  to  the  scene  of  action.  His  staff  fol- 
lowed him,  the  eye-witness  I  speak  of  being  one  of 
them.  We  learned  from  him  that  the  moment  the 
mutineers  caught  sight  of  their  old  colonel,  a  kind  of 


372  POWER  OVER  THE  14TH  REGIMENT 

thrill  trembled  through  their  ranks,  as  if  an  electric 
current  were  traversing  them.  He  then  drew  up  his 
horse  close  in  front  of  the  disorganised  crowd,  and 
quietly  gave  the  following  order  :  '  Grenadiers,  recover 
arms ;  shoulder  arms ;  to  the  right  wheel,  march ! '  The 
regiment  obeyed  at  once,  and  passed  on  into  the  boats 
without  saying  another  word.  Then,  having  enforced 
discipline,  as  he  was  bound  to  do,  the  general,  not  one  of 
those  officers  who  govern  by  mere  sternness,  without 
any  sympathy  for  their  men,  inquired  into  their  griev- 
ances, and  insisted  that  those  of  which  they  complained 
justly  should  be  redressed  before  the  transports  sailed. 
My  grandfather  died  before  his  time,  and  this  was  a 
real  loss  to  the  British  army.  Whether  I  should  have 
been  better  off  if  he  had  refrained  from  joining  the 
majority,  like  his  brother  John,  till  past  eighty- 
four,  is  quite  another  question.  I  fancy,  with  all 
his  fine  qualities,  he  was  a  bit  of  a  Tartar,  and  how 
a  short-sighted,  blundering,  unmethodical  grandson 
might  have  fared  at  his  hands,  is  a  problem  which 
perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  should  have  been  left 
unpresented  by  destiny,  and  unsolved.  Indeed,  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  any  necessity  for  its  solution 
would  ever  have  arisen. 

My  grandfather,  however  able  in  many  directions, 
did  not  trouble  himself  much  about  the  laws  of  nature. 
By  his  exertions  my  father  was  made  a  captain  when 
he  was  eleven,  and  carried  off  to  the  Netherlands  for 
the  campaigns  of  1793  and  1794, — campaigns  during 
which  the  Rhine  was  twice  solidly  frozen  over  j  he  was 


MY  FATHER— HIS  HEALTH  FAILED  EARLY     373 

then  swept  off  to  active  service  in  India  before  he  had 
seen  his  fourteenth  birthday.  The  result  of  all  this  was, 
that  my  father — no  doubt  a  very  strong  man  originally 
— died  at  fifty- seven,  as  Dr.  Chambers  told  me,  simply 
of  old  age.  Now,  had  my  grandfather  lived  on,  he 
would  have  continued  to  forget  that  his  son  was  made 
of  flesh  and  blood,  and  not  of  steel  wire  ;  he  would 
have  discouraged  any  attempt  of  his  to  retire  from  the 
army,  as  a  last  chance  of  reacquiring  something  like 
health  and  strength,  and  would  have  killed  him  by 
over-pressure  whilst  he  was  yet,  as  years  ago,  in  the 
beginning  of  youth.  In  that  case  I  should  not  have 
been  here  to  write  my  reminiscences,  or  to  speculate 
upon  the  treatment  I  should  have  received  from  the 
tough  old  ex- Governor  of  Ceylon.  As  it  was,  he  did 
not  extinguish  my  father,  but  only  crippled  and 
maimed  a  life,  just  saved  by  his  own  death — a  death 
which  from  that  point  of  view  can  hardly  be  looked 
upon  as  premature.  My  father,  from  the  age  of  three 
or  four- and- twenty,  could  not  do  much  more  than 
crawl  along  the  paths  set  before  him.  His  abilities 
and  acquirements  indeed  were  such  that  this  crawl- 
ing process  of  his  was  at  least  equal  to  the  ordinary 
walk  of  an  able  man,  so  that,  as  Chairman  of  the 
Excise  for  many  years,  he  won  golden  opinions  from 
all  those  who  were  brought  into  contact  with  him. 
Before  his  constitution  broke  down,  as  was  natural 
for  his  father's  son,  he  passed  through  many  exciting 
scenes.  For  instance,  he  served  under  Nelson  at 
Copenhagen,  his  regiment  having  volunteered  to  act 


374         NOTICED  BY  NELSON  AT  COPENHAGEN 

as  marines.  Nelson  seems  to  have  taken  a  fancy  to 
him ;  for,  as  the  council  of  war  was  about  to  sit, 
just  before  the  engagement,  he  clapped  him  on  the 
shoulder  and  said,  '  Come,  boy,  come  along  with  me.' 
So  this  lad  of  nineteen  took  his  seat  among  the  big- 
wigs ;  let  us  hope  as  '  a  wise  young  man,  a  Daniel 
come  to  judgment.'  When  the  fighting  had  ceased, 
Nelson  instantly  sent  him  on  with  despatches  to 
Berlin,  in  order  that  no  time  might  be  lost  in 
impressing  that  uncertain  and  somewhat  jealous 
Government,  with  the  results  of  the  struggle,  as 
much  might  depend,  as  far  as  immediate  conse- 
quences were  concerned,  upon  the  view  that  Prussia 
felt  disposed  to  take.  It  may  seem  a  difficult  position 
for  a  boy  of  his  age  to  have  to  confront  ministers 
and  ambassadors,  charged  to  the  brim  with  secret  or 
avowed  hostility  to  England,  but  his  antagonists 
were  not  aware  that  behind  that  youthful  aspect  lay 
hidden  the  experience  of  a  traveller,  who  had  already 
seen  the  '  cities  and  manners  of  many  men,'  and  of  a 
soldier  who  might  almost  be  called  a  veteran.  Lady 
Charlotte  Proby — then  at  Berlin  with  her  father,  our 
ambassador  to  the  King  of  Prussia — told  me  more 
than  once  how  great  a  sensation  was  produced  at  the 
Koyal  table,  when  this  beardless  youth  silenced  the 
most  pertinacious  of  his  questioning  enemies — a  man 
who  kept  bothering  him  as  to  what  would  have  hap- 
pened if  the  Danes  had  done  this,  that,  or  the  other — 
by  replying  at  once,  'Alors,  monseigneur,  nous 
aurions  fait  sans  combattre,  ce  que  nous  avons 


THE  '  DANNEBROG  '—RAPID  JOURNEY  TO  LONDON    375 

combattu  pour  faire,'  and  then  proceeded  to  explain, 
with  perfect  distinctness,  how  and  why  the  same 
result  must  undoubtedly  have  followed.  From  my 
father  himself  the  two  things  I  gather  in  connection 
with  this  Copenhagen  affair  were,  first,  the  blowing 
up  of  the  '  Dannebrog.'  He  used  to  tell  me  how  the 
doomed  vessel,  one  mass  of  flame,  drifted  through  the 
hostile  fleets,  her  guns  sullenly  discharging  them- 
selves as  she  passed  ;  then  in  an  instant,  a  dense 
column  of  black  smoke,  rushing  up  through  the  sky 
to  an  unbelievable  height,  diffused  itself  into  a  haze  of 
fire,  through  which  the  fragments  of  spars  and  tim- 
bers were  seen  dimly  floating.  These  fell  at  intervals 
with  a  heavy  splash  into  the  sea,  and  when  the  sound 
ceased  there  was  an  end  of  the  '  Dannebrog.'  The 
second  event  he  used  to  dwell  upon  was  this.  The 
vessel  on  which  he  had  embarked  himself  grounded  in 
the  Elbe,  and  he  often  told  me  how  a  dismay  fell  upon 
him,  lest  this  disaster  should  throw  him  behind  the 
regular  king's  messenger  plodding  home,  with  a 
duplicate  of  that  despatch,  which  it  was  my  father's 
great  object  to  be  first  in  delivering.  On  landing, 
however,  he  took  a  chaise  and  four,  and  bribed  the 
post-boys  to  gallop  to  London  at  the  rate  of  seventeen 
miles  an  hour,  thereby  all  but  frightening  into  fits 
an  elderly  gentleman,  who  had  been  unlucky  enough 
to  ask  him  for  a  lift.  This  experiment,  as  he  failed 
either  to  break  his  own  neck  or  that  of  the  elderly 
gentleman  in  question,  turned  out  a  success,  and  just 
won  him  the  race  according  to-  his  desire. 

25 


376  KINDNESS  OF  SCOTCHMEN 

Life,  after  this,  was  not  very  eventful  to  him.  He 
had  hoped,  as  his  oratorical  talents  were  considerable, 
his  reasoning  powers  acute,  and  his  knowledge  of  men 
(a  knowledge  even  in  ministers  of  the  highest  repu- 
tation somewhat  rarer  than  one  could  wish)  unusual 
for  his  years,  to  distinguish  himself  in  Parliament. 
Opportunities  would  not  have  been  wanting,  but 
before  anything  could  be  arranged  his  health  failed 
completely.  The  tune  that  remained  to  him  here, 
was  little  more  than  one  long  illness,  and,  though  he 
did  excellently  well  all  that  he  took  in  hand,  am- 
bitious hopes  had  to  be  put  aside,  and  he  died,  as  I 
have  said  above,  of  old  age  at  fifty-seven. 

When  my  grandfather  died  in  Ceylon,  another 
general  officer,  whose  name  need  not  be  given,  took 
charge  of  the  son  of  his  old  friend  with  enthusiastic 
good- will,  but  he  turned  out  to  be  a  capricious,  un- 
stable sort  of  man,  and  treated  my  father  so  badly, 
under  the  influence,  I  believe,  of  an  ill-conditioned 
Frenchwoman,  that  the  young  fellow,  though  scarcely 
sixteen,  turned  upon  him  with  irrevocable  determina- 
tion, and  threw  up  his  appointment.  A  .Highland 
regiment  quartered  at  the  station  took  part  with 
the  boy,  and,  as  a  company  of  theirs  happened  to  be 
vacant,  they  placed  it  under  his  command  at  once,  hi 
order  to  facilitate  his  return  to  Calcutta,  whither  they 
were  wending  their  way.  From  that  time  my  father 
always  maintained  a  strong  liking  for  the  Scotch,  and 
often  told  me  that  he  looked  upon  them  as  the  firmest 
and  truest  of  friends.  This  regiment  was  made  up 


GEORGE  CHOLMONDELEY— SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON  377 

almost  entirely  of  Frasers  ;  Fraser  of  Suddie,  if  I  am 
right  in  the  name,  being  its  colonel. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  pieces  of  old-world 
gossip  I  got  from  my  father  related  to  Lord  Nelson's 
Lady  Hamilton.  George  Cholmondeley  (he  is  men- 
tioned in  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson)  though  belonging 
to  a  former  generation,  became  an  intimate  friend  of 
our  family  during  the  latter  years  of  his  life.  He 
also  had  been  a  close  ally  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's 
before  his  marriage.  One  morning  he  was  summoned 
to  his  friend's  presence,  not  alone,  for  another  gentle- 
man, older  and  more  experienced,  had  been  sent  for 
at  the  same  time.  The  two  men  were  then  solemnly 
called  upon  to  advise  Sir  William  Hamilton,  whether 
it  might  not  now  be  desirable  that  he  should  make, 
as  the  phrase  is,  an  honest  woman  of  his  beautiful 
mistress.  The  reasons  for  and  against  it  were  care- 
fully submitted  to  them  by  the  lady's  protector. 
Cholmondeley,  young  and  hot,  broke  into  indignant 
remonstrances  :  '  Good  God  ! '  he  cried  out,  '  you  are 
not  going  to  make  such  an  ass  of  yourself  as  that ! 
Pray  put  the  idea  aside  at  once  ! '  But  the  other 
worthy,  to  Cholmondeley's  great  disgust,  took  quite 
a  different  view  :  *  Well/  he  said,  '  if,  as  you  assure 
us,  this  young  woman  fell  into  her  evil  ways  more 
by  mischance  than  from  any  natural  tendency  to 
vice ;  and  if,  as  you  feel  quite  certain,  she  is  now, 
not  only  a  true  penitent,  but  also  deeply  attached 
to  you,  my  opinion  is  that  you  cannot  do  better  than 
make  her  your  wife.1  When  they  departed  together, 


378  LADY  BYBON 

Cholmondeley  turned  angrily  upon  his  companion,  ob- 
serving :  '  You  call  yourself  a  friend,  do  you  ?  You 
ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself  for  ever  ! '  But  the 
answer  was  ready :  '  My  dear  Cholmondeley,  if  I  had 
been  as  young  and  as  ignorant  of  what  is  going  on 
as  you  are,  I  might  very  likely  have  followed  your 
example,  but  since  I  happen  to  know,  on  the  best 
authority,  that  the  marriage,  about  which  we  were 
consulted  this  morning,  took  place  a  week  ago,  I 
thought  it  as  well  to  accept  the  inevitable  !  ' 

On  two  occasions  my  father  had  to  take  upon  him- 
self the  difficult  and  disagreeable  task  of  arbitrating 
between  a  husband  and  a  wife,  and  that  after  a  re- 
conciliation had  become  impossible.  The  husbands, 
in  both  cases,  were  eminent  men,  though  not  quite  of 
equal  eminence.  Lady  Byron,  an  old  family  friend 
of  ours,  when  driven  to  desperation,  applied  to  my 
father  to  act  on  her  behalf.  This  he  did.  But  as  he 
felt  himself  bound  in  honour  to  disclose  nothing, 
the  greedy  curiosity  of  the  public  must  not  expect 
any  food  from  me  who  know  no  more  than  they 
do.  I  can  only  tell  them  that  my  father  never  re- 
pented of  what  he  had  done.  The  one  point  I 
can  speak  of  which  appears  to  me  worth  noting  is 
this.  Here  were  three  men,  my  father,  Dr.  Lushing- 
ton,  and  Sir  Robert  Wilmot  Horton,  a  cousin  and 
early  friend  of  Lord  Byron's.  They  were  all  three 
men  of  great  ability,  they  were  all  three  thorough 
men  of  the  world,  they  were  all  three  men  who  had 
worked  out  their  lives  on  perfectly  different  lines. 
My  father  had  been  tossed  about  the  world,  from  the 


THE  BYRON  QUESTION  379 

time  that  lie  found  himself  a  captain  in  the  army  at 
eleven ;  Dr.  Lushington  was  a  distinguished  Oxford 
man,  and  fellow  of  a  College,  who  became  a  highly 
successful  advocate  ;  Sir  Robert  -Horton,  the  cousin, 
a  country  squire  of  good  position,  afterwards  an  able 
civil  servant  and  professional  politician.  And  yet 
these  three  men,  so  different  in  their  antecedents  and 
characters,  were  completely  in  unison,  and  held  that 
Lady  Byron  had  no  choice  except  to  separate  her- 
self from  her  husband  !  They  were,  I  said,  all  men 
of  the  world.  In  other  words,  if  Lady  Byron's  anger 
had  been  roused,  on  discovering  that  Lord  Byron  was 
not  an  irreproachable  husband,  they  would,  I  am  sure, 
have  told  her  in  very  plain  language,  '  As  you  chose 
with  your  eyes  open  to  marry  a  man  of  wayward 
genius,  who  is  at  the  same  tune  the  spoilt  child  of 
society,  you  cannot  expect  him  to  behave  exactly 
like  a  model  archdeacon,  you  must  accept  the  conse- 
quences of  your  own  rashness,  and  try  to  touch  the 
higher  and  better  parts  of  his  nature  by  gentleness 
and  persevering  affection.'  As  they  did  not  take 
this  course,  I  must  leave  to  Lord  Byron's  partisans  to 
settle  for  themselves,  how  it  came  to  pass  that  these 
three  gentlemen,  being  the  men  they  were,  if  Lord 
Byron's  conduct  were  pardonable  at  all,  never  sug- 
gested to  his  wife  that  she  should  pardon  him. 

Again,  many  years  afterwards,  he  attempted  to 
mediate  between  Lord  and  Lady  Lytton  (she  was  a 
cousin  of  ours),  but  in  vain.  Her  temper  was  in  such 
a  state  of  inflammation,  that  she  would  listen  to  no 
moderate  counsels,  and  my  father  had  to  sit  still 


380     LORD  AND  LADY  LYTTON— CARLO  DOYLE 

under  her  furious  invectives  whilst  dying  of  heart 
disease.  I  have  always  thought  that  by  her  impla- 
cable egotism  she  shortened  his  life.  Long  after  his 
death  I  put  my  resentment  on  one  side,  and  tried  to 
help  her,  but  she  soon  became  intractable.  Lord 
Lytten,  who  always  behaved  with  perfect  courtesy 
both  to  my  father  and  myself,  offered  to  increase  her 
allowance  on  certain  conditions.  I  thought  them  rea- 
sonable enough,  but  the  very  mention  of  the  word 
'conditions'  drove  her  wild  with  rage,  and  a  storm 
of  abuse  fell  on  my  devoted  head.  Our  intercourse 
ended  with  a  letter,  addressed  to  me  thus  : — 

Sir  Francis  Hastings  Doyle,  Bart., 

Receiver-General  of  Customs  (However  Infamous), 
Thames  St., 

London. 

The  inside  of  the  letter  matched  the  outside,  and  I 
never  saw  or  communicated  with  her  again. 

To  return  to  my  father's  profession.  As  he  left 
the  army  so  young,  it  is  not  to  him,  but  to  his 
brother  Charles  Joseph,  commonly  known  as  Carlo 
Doyle,  and  celebrated  in  his  day  as  one  of  the  hand- 
somest men  in  the  British  army,  that  I  am  indebted 
for  a  certain  number  of  military  anecdotes  worth,  I 
think,  rescuing  from  oblivion.  I  have  tried  hard, 
with  the  help  of  my  distinguished  friend  Colonel 
Grove,  to  give  them  the  requisite  degree  of  accuracy 
and  exactness,  but  upon  the  whole  with  very  im- 
perfect success,  so  that  the  reader  must  take  them  in 
the  rough,  just  as  I  had  to  take  them,  long  years  ago, 
when  they  turned  up  in  casual  conversations  with 


COLONEL  HEAD— GENERAL  LONG  381 

my  uncle.  To  begin  with  number  one.  There  was 
a  certain  Colonel  Head,  of  the  19th  Light  Dragoons, 
who  would  have  quite  realised  Frederick  the  Great's 
idea  of  a  cavalry  officer,  viz.  that  anyone  in  that 
branch  of  the  service  who  waits  to  be  charged  ought 
to  be  cashiered  on  the  spot.  Colonel  Head,  ordered 
to  move  his  squadrons  up,  and  join  a  brigade  of 
Heavy  Dragoons  under  a  certain  General  Long, 
arrived  at  his  post  to  a  moment,  but  General  Long 
was  behind  time,  and  the  Irish  colonel  found  him- 
self opposed  to  a  very  superior  French  force,  with 
the  support  that  he  had  been  led  to  expect  wholly 
wanting.  Nevertheless,  the  spirit  of  St.  Donnybrook 
(if  there  be  such  a  saint  or  martyr  in  the  Irish 
hagiology)  filled  him  with  an  adequate  enthusiasm  : 
*  Mee  lads,'  he  said,  '  you  see  those  fellows  over  there  ; 
tip  'em  the  Brummagem — Spurrs — and  sa-a-bres  ! ' 
'  Mee  lads '  obeyed  with  right  good  will,  and  broke 
the  enemy  up  like  soap-bubbles,  chasing  them  to  a 
town  some  distance  off,  then  in  French  occupation. 
My  uncle,  who  charged  with  them  (as  one  of  the 
staff,  he  had,  I  suppose,  some  good  reason  for  being 
there)  frequently  declared  to  me,  that  as  they  came 
back  at  a  swinging  trot,  through  squares  of  French 
infantry  on  either  side,  the  men  were  swaying  like 
reeds  in  the  wind,  and  that  he  could  hear  the  ex- 
postulations of  the  officers,  '  Tenez  ferme,  mais  tenez 
ferme,  done  ! '  as  he  passed.  To  the  end  of  his  life 
he  felt  very  angry  at  the  after-treatment  of  the  19tjj 
Dragoons,  always  insisting  on  it  that  if  this  exploit 


382     DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON'S  DESPATCH 

of  the  knight  of  St.  Donnybrook  had  been  properly 
followed  up,  a  great  success  must  have  ensued.  On 
their  return,  as  might  have  been  expected,  they 
found  General  Long  &  Co.  where  he  ought  to  have 
been  a  good  while  before.  Upon  him  the  effect  of 
this  charge  was  by  no  means  what  it  had  been  upon 
the  French.  He  did  not  consider  it  a  triumph  at  all, 
and,  after  blowing  up  his  subordinate  officer  sky- 
high,  for  not  waiting  till  he,  the  true  commander, 
had  found  himself  at  leisure  to  enter  an  appearance, 
ended  his  reprimand  thus :  '  I  suppose,  Colonel 
Head,  if  you  had  found  the  gates  of  Alcantara  (let 
us  so  call  the  place  provisionally)  open,  you  would 
have  ridden  into  the  market-place  ? '  If  he  had 
expected  penitence,  the  expectation  was  a  foolish 
one,  for  the  Irishman  assented  at  once  :  '  By  Jasus, 
and  that  I  would  ! '  being  his  immediate  reply.  A 
general,  however,  has  means  of  telling  his  own  story 
at  head- quarters  ;  not  so  a  colonel  with  whom  he  is 
at  variance  ;  and  the  result  of  Colonel  Head's  readi- 
ness to  ride  into  the  market-place  (where  certainly 
he  would  not  have  stood  idle)  was,  unless  my 
memory  deceives  me,  a  famous  order  to  be  found  hi 
the  Duke  of  Wellington's  Despatches.  This  order, 
after  stating  that  nobody  doubted  the  gallantry  of 
the  19th  Light  Dragoons,  went  on  to  remark,  that 
the  romantic  tales  of  great  kingdoms  being  overrun 
and  conquered  by  a  few  squadrons  of  light  cavalry, 
are  generally  supposed  to  be  slight  exaggerations. 
My  uncle  always  maintained  his  opinion,  that  from 


DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON— DUKE  OF  MARLBOROUGH  383 

the  date  of  that  order  the  efforts  of  the  English 
cavalry  in  Spain,  though  they  did  their  duty  in  a 
manner  beyond  criticism,  became  tamer  and  less 
enterprising.  He  had  an  opportunity,  later  on,  of 
giving  his  view  of  the  case  to  Lord  Wellington,  at  a 
military  banquet,  held  somewhere,  in  one  of  the  in- 
tervals of  the  war ;  but  he  could  get  nothing  out  of 
the  Iron  Earl  (he  was  then  an  Earl,  and  not  a 
Duke)  except  '  Hum  !  haw  !  ho  !  that  is  what  you 
think,  is  it  ?  '  Wellington,  I  fancy,  always  trusted 
less  to  cavalry  than  his  eminent  predecessor,  the 
Duke  of  Marlborough.  The  Duke  of  Marlborough, 
unless  I  forget  my  history,  was  in  the  habit  of  using 
his  guns  and  his  foot-soldiers  very  freely  at  the  be- 
ginning of  an  action.  Then,  as  soon  as  both  armies 
had  worn  themselves  out  in  a  long  and  doubtful 
struggle,  he  began  to  pour  in  masses  -of  horse,  kept 
by  him  fresh  and  unexhausted  till  the  critical 
moment,  thus  securing  and  completing  his  victory. 
Wellington,  on  the  other  hand,  from  first  to  last,  re- 
lied less  upon  sabres  and  lances  than  upon  muskets 
and  bayonets. 

Another  story  of  the  same  time  brings  two  of  our 
family  into  play.  Sir  John  Milley  Doyle,  who  had  a 
half-independent  Portuguese  command,  seemed  to 
be  pushing  on  his  troops  rather  faster  than  Lord 
Wellington  liked.  *  Ride  over,  Doyle,  to  that  damned 
Irish  cousin  of  yours,'  was  the  order  given,  '  and  tell 
him  to  keep  his  men  in  hand  for  the  present.'  Doyle 
obeyed,  and  found  the  '  damned  Irish  cousin '  crack- 


384  SIR  JOHN  MILLET  DOYLE— FUENTES  D'ONORE 

ing  a  huge  hunting- whip  to  the  tune  of  l  Hola, 
senores !  forward,  senores !  en  avant,  senores ! '  and  so 
on.  On  receiving  the  general's  command  he  an- 
swered thus  :  '  Oh,  very  well !  that  must  be  as  he 
chooses  ;  but  do  you  tell  Lord  Wellington  from  me, 
Carlo,  that  it  is  a  very  bad  plan  backing  young 
horses  just  when  you  have  got  them  to  face  a  hill!  * 
Carlo,  I  apprehend,  was  much  too  wide-awake  to  do 
anything  of  the  kind ! 

Again,  between  the  two  actions  which  took  place 
at  Fuentes  d'  Onore,  a  French  officer,  prowling  about 
in  the  hope  of  making  some  discoveries  that  might 
be  turned  to  the  advantage  of  his  general,  encountered 
and  found  himself  arrested  by  a  British  patrol.  He 
was  brought  to  my  uncle  by  his  captors,  and  intro- 
duced with  the  following  speech.  '  If  you  please,  sir, 
I  don't  know  what  he  means,  but  he  says  he  is  a 
parliamentary  \ '  My  uncle  marched  him  off  to  Lord 
Wellington,  who  wasted  no  time  about  the  matter. 
1  Send  him  to  the  rear.'  '  But,  my  lord,  he  says  he's 
a parlementaire'  i Parlementaire  be  damned!  Send 
him  to  the  rear ! '  On  the  road  thither,  the  prisoner, 
who  seemed  to  be  a  free-and-easy  kind  of  gentleman, 
was  naturally  not  unwilling  to  ingratiate  himself  with 
those  into  whose  hands  he  had  fallen  ;  still  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  he  meant,  more  or  less,  what  he 
said,  and  this  is  what  he  did  say.  '  Quant  a  vous, 
vous  n'avez  qu'a  dire,  Hal,  fron  dress !  et  voila  vos 
gredins  en  ligne.  Quant  a  nous,  il  faut  repe"ter, 
Avancez,  mes  amis!  avancez,  mes  enfants!  Bien 


RUSSIANS  AND  ENGLISH  AT  HAMBURG         385 

heureux,  s'ils  ne  vous  impendent  pas,  Avancez  vous- 
me'me,  monsieur  le  capitaine ! '  Now,  this  estimate  of 
the  two  nations  was,  I  dare  say,  accurate  enough.  A 
French  soldier  might  be  quite  as  brave  as  an  English 
one  ;  in  quickness,  in  individual  enterprise,  he  might 
even  be  superior  to  most  of  his  opponents.  Still,  these 
very  qualities  often  rendered  him  less  docile  and  effec- 
tive, as  part  of  a  military  machine,  an  instrument  fitted 
for  the  mere  act  of  battle.  He  fell  to  criticising  an 
order  instead  of  simply  obeying  it  without  a  question, 
after  the  manner  of  his  English  rival.  Therefore, 
although  more  field-marshals'  batons  might  be  carried 
in  the  knapsacks  of  French  privates,  the  English,  if 
we  may  borrow  Sheridan's  phrase  from  his  farce  of 
*  St.  Patrick's  Day,'  *  argued  better  in  platoons.' 

In  a  very  different  part  of  Europe,  my  uncle  shared 
in  an  expedition  of  quite  another  character.  During 
the  year  1813,  I  believe  when  Germany  had  arisen 
as  one  man  (no,  not  quite  that,  there  was  one  very 
notable  exception,  M.  von  Goethe),  to  shake  off  the 
oppressions  and  outrages  of  France,  a  force,  partly 
composed  of  Russians  and  partly  of  Englishmen, 
advanced  to  Hamburg,  and  were  royally  welcomed 
by  the  inhabitants  of  that  ancient  city.  It  will  be 
some  time,  I  fancy,  before  these  two  nations  again 
fight  side  by  side.  Perhaps  a  century  or  two  hence, 
when  the  British  Islands  have  been  pulled  down  by 
the  disciples  of  Progress,  and  the  preachers  of  a 
world- wide  philanthropy  into  a  tenth-rate  power,  we 
may  furnish  a  humble  contingent  to  some  future  Czar 


386      'THE  ROSE'  AND  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

whilst  he  is  vainly  attempting  to  resist  the  invincible 
Chinese  (i^.  if  we  are  to  accept  the  Muscovite  tradi- 
tion, that  the  Russians  are  to  subdue  all  the  rest  of 
mankind,  and  that  China  is  then  to  conquer  them). 
Without  much  affection  for  Russia,  I  cannot  but 
think  that  her  defeat,  under  such  circumstances, 
would  entail  what  the  French  call  a  mauvais  quart 
cFheure  on  the  world  in  general,  and  though  at  pre- 
sent this  event  does  not  seem  near  or  probable,  I  can 
only  say  that  hi  my  judgment  more  unlikely  things 
have  happened.  In  1813,  however,  Englishmen  and 
Russians  joined  together  that  they  might  deliver 
Germany  from  the  French  yoke.  Their  troops  were 
welcomed  by  the  municipal  authorities  with  the 
greatest  enthusiasm,  and  a  great  banquet  was  in- 
augurated in  their  honour.  Somewhere  in  the  city, 
thirteen  huge  casks  of  wine,  belonging  to  the  cor- 
poration, and  filled  with  the  finest  Rhenish  obtain- 
able for  love  or  money,  stood  in  a  group.  The 
queen  of  this  august  family  was  called  The  Rose,  an 
obvious  allusion  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  others 
were  named  after  the  Twelve  Apostles.  Whenever, 
upon  some  solemn  occasion,  our  Lady  (not  of 
Sorrow)  had  to  part  with  some  of  her  nectar,  the 
deficiency  was  supplied  from  the  store  of  the  oldest 
Apostle,  and  so  on  ;  the  youngest  Apostle  being  re- 
plenished, without  counting  the  cost,  from  the  best 
and  most  suitable  hock  that  could  be  found.  At  the 
banquet  I  have  spoken  of,  each  field  officer  found  at 
his  side  a  pint  of  the  Rose,  and  a  bottle  from  one  of 


RETREAT  OF  ALLIES— BLIGHTING  OF  'THE  ROSE'  387 

the  older  Apostles  ;  plebeian  wines,  I  dare  say,  might 
be  called  for  ad  libitum,  by  anyone  who  wanted  more 
than  the  city's  liberal  allowance.  Healths  were 
drunk,  sanguine  prophecies  bubbled  over  everything 
like  a  flood,  and  '  all  went  merry  as  a  marriage  bell.' 
But  war,  alas !  is  a  matter  of  deeds,  not  of  words  ; 
even  the  grandest  speeches  will  not  restore  lives 
wasted,  or  precious  blood  poured  out  in  vain.  The 
allies  were  outnumbered  or  out-manosuvred  ;  at  any 
rate,  they  had  to  retire  from  the  city,  and  in  marched 
the  exulting  French.  There  was  no  question  then 
of  pints,  or  even  of  bottles  ;  the  intruding  army, 
•besides  committing  other  little  irregularities,  perhaps 
even  harder  to  be  endured,  set  to  work  with  a  will, 
and  drank  the  Virgin  Mary  and  her  twelve  stately 
adherents  dry,  in  three  quarters  of  an  hour.  The 
same  sort  of  thing  will  happen  in  London  one  of 
these  days,  if  we  go  on  playing  at  being  a  first-rate 
power,  with  an  inadequate  navy  and  a  still  more 
inadequate  army.  But  there  is  no  help  for  it ;  demo- 
cracy is  democracy,  a  form  of  government  utterly 
unfitted  for  a  great  empire,  with  far-reaching  interests, 
and  exposed  to  a  complication  of  ever-recurring 
dangers.  I  should  have  thought  that  the  fate  of 
Athens  might  have  impressed  these  truths  upon  the 
minds  of  our  statesmen,  but  they  seem  like  men  who 
know  nothing  of  history,  and  live  as  if  they  had 
not  any  ancestors  behind  them,  but  were  just  intro- 
duced into  a  new  world.  We  can  only  hope,  there- 
fore, that,  as  happens  to  men  slowly  recovering  from 


388  DANGERS  OF  DEMOCRACY— SPANISH  PRAIRIE-FIRE 

a  dreamless  sleep  and  stupor,  the  Past,  with  all  that 
it  has  taught,  may  come  back  to  them  by  degrees, 
and  that  they  will  not  continue  to  act  and  speak,  as 
if  they  had  been  turned  out  of  Eden  some  twenty 
years  ago. 

Returning  to  the  Peninsular  "War,  Carlo  gave  me 
a  very  interesting  account  of  what,  I  suppose,  would 
be  called  in  America  a  prairie-fire,  in  the  height  of 
the  dry  Spanish  summer.  The  grass  suddenly  flared 
up,  and  the  burning  torrent  swept  down  to  a  small 
river.  At  the  other  side  of  this  river,  that  division  of 
the  army  in  which  my  uncle  was  serving  had  pitched 
its  camp.  Everybody  thought,  of  course,  that  the 
conflagration  on  reaching  the  water  would  have  to 
stop.  But  not  a  bit  of  it ! — the  flame  gathered  to  the 
edge,  and  straightway  jumped  the  brook  like  a  well*- 
trained  hunter.  It  then  rushed  through  the  tents, 
playfully  blowing  up  a  powder-magazine  or  two  as  it 
passed,  on  to  a  vast  forest  behind  them.  All  through 
the  night,  he  told  me,  the  fire  kept  eating  its  way 
onwards ;  and  the  crash  of  the  trees,  as  they  fell 
continuously  one  after  the  other,  produced  an  im- 
pression upon  the  nerves — a  sort  of  irritating  expec- 
tation— which  totally  prevented  sleep.  At  the 
moment,  however,  he  did  not  lose  his  presence  of 
mind,  and  there  was  a  general  laugh  against  him 
afterwards,  because,  when  it  became  obvious  that 
the  mischief  could  not  be  averted,  he  was  heard 
calling  out  to  his  servant,  in  a  loud  voice  (I  have 
said  that  he  was  well  known  as  a  dandy — perhaps, 


GENERAL  SHERBIIOKE  389 

rather,  as  a  coxcomb,  which,  after  all,  In  a  handsome 
young  officer,  is  not  a  capital  crime),  '  John,  John, 
you  go  to  the  horses  j  I'll  look  after  my  small 
things  ! ' 

General  Sherbroke,  also,  the  hero  of  the  world- 
famous  ghost- story,  used  to  figure  a  good  deal  in  his 
narratives.  The  general  was  a  kind-hearted  man, 
but  hot-tempered,  and,  as  might  be  expected  from 
his  antecedents,  full  of  nervous  eccentricity.  He 
came  once  upon  some  baggage  waggons,  and  the 
baggage  drivers  were  walking  past  a  sick  officer,  left 
helpless  upon  the  road,  with  as  much  indifference  to 
his  fate  as  if  he  had  been  one  of  the  garrison  at 
Sinkat.  Sherbroke  seized  the  trunks  that  were  in 
transit,  including,  I  believe,  some  of  his  own,  and 
flung  them  right  and  left  into  space,  seating  the 
officer  on  the  waggon  in  their  stead.  When  he 
arrived  at  his  destination  he  took  the  sick  officer  into 
his  own  quarters,  and  watched  over  him  with  the 
utmost  tenderness  until  he  died.  In  due  time  it 
became  necessary  to  read  the  funeral  service  over 
his  body.  Sherbroke  dressed  himself  in  full  uniform, 
and  began  his  task  with  the  solemnity  of  an 
archdeacon.  He  arrived  safely  at  '  Ashes  to  ashes,' 
but  then,  unluckily,  some  impish  little  Spanish 
urchins  came  upon  the  scene,  laughing  and  jumping, 
and  chasing  each  other  up  and  down  the  churchyard. 
The  soldier- priest's  temper  went  like  a  rocket ;  he 
began  pelting  the  lads  heavily  with  stones,  interpo- 
lating into  the  Prayer  Book  this  kind  of  unclerical 


390  SHERBROKE  AND  PICTON 

language  :    ( You  d d  young  blackguards,  I'll 

teach  you  to  skip  and  grin  whilst  I  read  the  funeral 
service  over  a  British  officer  !  Take  that — and  that 
— and  that  ! ' — accompanying  the  pelting  with  a 
volley  of  curses.  Having  thus  discharged  his  wrath, 
the  archdeacon  in  red  resumed  his  functions,  and  the 
service  went  on,  '  Dust  to  dust,'  &c.,  just  as  if  no- 
thing had  happened. 

There  is  another  Peninsular  legend  in  which  he 
also  fills  the  foremost  place  ;  the  facts,  I  believe,  are 
well  known,  but  they  are  always  assigned  to  the 
wrong  man — to  Picton,  and  not  to  Sherbroke.  Sher- 
broke  sent  my  uncle  forward  to  tell  a  certain  com- 
missary, that  such-and-such  an  amount  of  bread  must 
be  prepared  for  troops  on  the  march,  by  next  morn- 
mg.  My  uncle  found  the  gentleman  in  question 
giving  a  sumptuous  breakfast  to  a  number  of  his 
friends.  He  communicated  his  order,  and  was 
answered  very  politely  by  the  founder  of  the  feast, 
that  he  would  use  every  exertion,  and  hoped  that  he 
should  be  able  to  comply  with  the  general's  request. 
Carlo,  who  knew  Sherbroke's  temper  much  better 
than  the  commissary  did,  felt  sure  that  his  peppery 
commander  would  not  be  satisfied  with  these  vague 
assurances,  and  replied  accordingly,  '  Very  good ; 
those  are  the  orders — it  is  your  business,  not  mine, 
to  have  them  carried  into  effect.'  Thereupon,  back  he 
trotted.  On  reporting  the  commissary's  message, 
Sherbroke,  as  he  expected,  broke  out  into  a  torrent 
of  wrath.  '  He'll  use  every  exertion,  will  he  ?  He 


DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON  AND  SOULT  391 

hopes  to  be  able  to  comply  with  my  request,  does 
he  ?  Return  to  him,  sir,  with  this  message — that  if 
the  bread  is  not  on  the  spot  at  the  right  moment, 
I'll  hang  him  ! '  Very  naturally  this  plan  of  the 
general's  was  not  agreeable  to  the  commissary,  and 
he  appealed  to  Lord  Wellington,  who  happened  to  be 
within  reach.  Lord  Wellington  listened  patiently, 
and  when  the  perturbed  official  informed  him  that 
General  Sherbroke  had  used  most  extraordinary 
language,  and  had  even  threatened  to  hang  him,  in- 
quired, with  a  sympathising  air,  'Did  he,  by  G— - ?' 
'  He  did,  indeed,  my  lord.'  '  Then  all  I  can  say  is, 
by  G —  he'll  do  it ;  and  I  strongly  recommend  you 
to  have  the  bread  ready  ! '  I  need  scarcely  inform 
my  readers  that  the  bread  arrived  in  excellent  time. 

I  have  no  doubt  I  could  go  on  pumping  up,  out  of 
the  depths  of  my  memory,  many  interesting  stories  of 
the  same  kind,  but  I  think,  perhaps,  the  public  may 
have  had  enough  of  them.  I  shall,  therefore,  only  relate 
one  other,  to  me  by  far  more  interesting  and  important 
than  all  the  rest  put  together.  I  regret  most  sin- 
cerely that  I  cannot  give  the  exact  time  when,  or  the 
exact  place  where,  the  events  happened.  I  can  only 
assure  my  readers  that  they  are  substantially  true, 
but  my  recollections  must  be  taken,  as  I  said  before, 
in  the  rough. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  Peninsular  War,  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  had  to  force  the  Gaves,  as  the 
operation  was  called,  i.e.,  to  force  his  way  through 
the  gorges  of  the  Pyrenees,  retorting  their  invasion 

26 


392  THE  DUKE  GOES  TO  BED 

upon  the  French.  There  was  a  series  of  manoeuvres 
and  counter-manoeuvres,  accompanied  by  a  certain 
amount  of  fighting,  though  none  of  the  battles  were 
battles  of  primary  importance.  In  fact,  it  was  a  military 
game  of  chess  between  Wellington  and  Marshal  Soult, 
keenly  contested,  and  finally  won  by  the  former,  who 
succeeded  in  entering  France,  and  in  passing  on  vic- 
toriously to  the  end  of  the  campaign.  On  one  occa- 
sion, the  Duke  thought  it  necessary  to  make  a  forced 
march,  that  he  might  anticipate  the  enemy  hi  securing 
for  himself  a  certain  position.  In  the  course  of  this 
march  the  army  became  somewhat  disorganised,  and 
the  men  struggled  on  to  their  destination  in  a  way 
which  would  have  rendered  an  attack  by  the  French, 
,  could  they  have  made  one,  difficult  to  deal  with. 
The  Duke,  however,  gave  his  orders  with  perfect 
coolness,  and  then  went  on  to  say,  '  Now  I  shall  go 
to  bed.'  *  To  bed,  my  lord,'  was  the  somewhat 
anxious  comment ;  '  but  what  if  the  French  attack 
us  during  the  night  ?  '  'Oh  dear,  no  ! '  he  said,  c  we 
are  quite  safe  from  attack  till  ten  o'clock  to-morrow 
morning ! 7  The  troops,  as  they  came  up,  were 
properly  disposed  of,  the  requisite  preparations  made, 
and  everybody  looked  out  for  the  coming  ten  o'clock. 
Accordingly,  just  as  had  been  predicted,  shortly  after 
that  hour,  the  French  made  then*  appearance  in  force, 
and  endeavoured  to  wrest  from  the  British  troops  the 
advantage  gained  by  that  successful  march.  They 
were,  however,  baffled  and  driven  back.  That  move 
in  the  blood-gambit  remained  to  the  credit  of 


393 


Wellington  and  England.  General  Alava,  to  whom 
the  Duke  opened  himself  more  freely  than  to  most 
other  officers — probably  because  he  was  of  foreign 
birth — ventured  to  put  this  question  to  him,  '  Might 
I  ask,  my  lord,  how  you  knew  that  the  French  would 
not  attack  us  till  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  ? '  l  Oh, 
certainly  ! '  was  the  answer.  '  As  we  were  riding 
through  such-and-such  a  pass,  did  you  not  see  three 
French  vedettes  gallop  off  as  hard  as  they  could  ? ' 

*  No,'  said  Alava,  with  his  eyes  and  mouth  wicfe  open. 

*  But  I  did,1  retorted  Wellington,  '  and  I  felt  at  once 
what  would  happen.     Those  fellows  went  off  and 
reported  to  Soult,  that  they  had  seen  me  there  in 
person,  and  I  knew  Soult  quite  well  enough  to  be 
sure  of  his  course.     He  would  summon  a  council  of 
war  as  soon  as  possible,  and  tell  them,  "  If  Lord 
Wellington  is  there  in  person  he  must  have  got  up 
his   reserves,  before   attacking   him  I  must  get   up 
mine ; "  and  as  for  his  reserves,  I  was  quite  certain 
that  they  could  not  be  got  up  to  act  against  us  till 
ten  in  the  morning,  therefore  I  took  things  easily 
and  went  to  bed.'     That  is  what  we  call  at  chess, 
being  able  to  give  your  antagonist  a  knight ;  whether, 
if  Massena,  whom  he  always  dreaded  more  than  any 
other  of  Napoleon's  generals,  had  been  the  one  against 
him,   he  would  have  acted  precisely  in  the  same 
manner,  may  be  doubted.     Even  now  I  have  not 
come  to  the  end  of  the  story.     I  was  repeating  it  in 
the  common  room  at  All  Souls  one  evening,  old  Sir 
Charles  Yaughan,  the  ex- Ambassador,  being  present. 


394  SIR  C.  VAUGHAN  AND  THE  FRENCH  GENERAL 

'  Ah,  yes,'  he  remarked,  '  I  know  that  story  as  well 
as  you  do  ;  and  what  is  more,  I  can  cap  it  for  you. 
I  was  telling  it  some  years  ago  at  a  Paris  dinner.  A 
French  general,  one  of  the  party,  on  hearing  it, 
looked  for  a  moment  or  two  rather  sulky  and  dis- 
composed, but  at  last  broke  out  as  follows,  "  Yes, 
indeed,  for  I  was  second  in  command  on  that  occa- 
sion, and  those  were  the  very  words  Soult  used  ! " 

I  shall  here  bring  my  recollections  of  what  I  was 
told  about  the  French  war  to  an  end,  but  one  or  two 
of  Carlo's  other  stories  deserve,  also,  I  think,  to  be 
recorded.  He  went  to  India  with  the  first  Marquis 
of  Hastings,  as  his  military  secretary,  and  whilst 
there  was  exposed  to  the  cholera.  This  outbreak  of 
the  cholera  fell  then  upon  the  Hindoos,  so  far  as  I 
can  judge  from  his  account  of  it,  as  a  new  malady.1 
Whether  at  any  former  period  it  had  been  known  in 
the  East  I  cannot  say ;  if  it  had,  it  seems  to  have 
passed  out  of  memory.  Some  people,  unless  I  am 
mistaken,  believe  that  the  terrible  '  Black  Death '  of 
the  Middle  Ages  was  cholera  in  its  most  malignant 
form,  drifting  gradually  westwards  till  it  reached 
us — not  the  ordinary  plague.  But,  at  any  rate,  in 
all  those  Asiatic  regions,  till  its  reappearance  in  1816, 
it  had  been,  I  fancy,  so  long  unrecognised,  that  it 
was  practically  unknown.  He  saved  a  favourite 
servant  of  his  by  a  rather  daring  manoeuvre.  The 
doctors  declared  recovery  impossible,  and  that  he 

1  My  uncle  may  have  been  mistaken,  of  course  ;  but  that  was  the 
impression  he  left  upon  my  mind. 


BRITISH  PRESENCE  OF  MIND  395 

could  not  live  through  the  day.  '  Then  I  suppose 
I  may  do  what  I  like  with  him  ? '  was  my  uncle's 
query.  *  Of  course,'  they  answered.  Upon  this  he 
posted  a  man  as  a  sort  of  sentinel  to  watch  over  his 
pulse,  and  whenever  that  stopped,  or  threatened  to 
stop,  he  poured  in  a  tablespoonful  of  camphorated 
spirits  of  wine.  As  the  man  did  not  die,  either  of 
the  disease  or  of  the  remedy,  which  is  saying  a  great 
deal,  my  uncle  was  very  proud  of  his  irregular 
medical  triumph. 

He  also  once  related  to  me  a  remarkable  instance 
of  presence  of  mind  shown  before  him  in  a  tiger-hunt. 
Everybody  supposed  the  tiger  to  be  dead,  but  when 
a  certain  officer  rashly  approached  him,  the  creature 
suddenly  recovered  himself,  sprang  upon  his  enemy, 
and  carried  him  off  to  the  jungle.  The  officer  fired 
one  of  his  two  pistols  at  its  head,  but  without  effect, 
and  found  himself  in  the  tiger's  jaws  with  his  right 
arm  pinned  down  across  his  breast,  utterly  powerless. 
After  a  time,  his  captor,  in  order  to  do  his  work  more 
comfortably,  chucked  him  up  into  the  air,  catching 
him  by  the  thigh  as  he  fell.  His  victim  took  advan- 
tage of  this  opportunity  to  introduce  the  muzzle  of 
his  remaining  pistol,  quietly  and  steadily,  into  the 
tiger's  ear.  When  he  pulled  the  trigger  the  brute  fell 
dead  without  a  struggle.  The  snap  of  the  animal's 
teeth,  none  the  less,  re-catching  him  as  he  fell,  had 
inflicted  so  severe  a  wound  upon  the  sinews  of  his 
thigh  that  he  was  lamed  for  life.  Still,  he  may  be 
said  to  have  gained  a  step  by  this  lameness,  as  Lord 


396    BREAKING  OF  CALCUTTA  BANKS— WEST  INDIES 

Hastings,  in  acknowledgment  of  the  courage  and 
calmness  he  had  shown,  promoted  him  upon  the  spot. 

During  his  residence  in  India  my  uncle  saved  a 
considerable  sum  of  money,  but  returned  to  England 
in  1823,  leaving  his  fortune  behind  him.  He  left  it 
to  be  forwarded  whenever  the  exchange  between  the 
two  countries  took  a  turn  favourable  for  England  ! 
Before  it  did  this,  the  great  Calcutta  Banks,  in  one  of 
which  his  funds  were  deposited,  went  down,  one  after 
the  other,  like  ninepins,  and  Carlo  found  himself  left 
penniless.  He  thus,  when  long  past  fifty,  had  to 
begin  his  life  again.  At  first  he  went  out  to  Jamaica 
as  Lord  Sligo's  secretary.  After  this,  they  made  him 
Governor  of  Grenada,  and  there  he  remained  until 
his  health  broke  down,  and  he  returned  home  to  die. 

One  of  the  incidents  of  his  Governorship  has 
always  interested  me,  on  its  own  account  first,  and 
still  more  as  illustrating  the  traditional  character  of 
the  different  negro  tribes.  A  ship  with  a  cargo  of 
slaves  having  been  captured,  the  slaves  on  board 
were  released,  and  handed  over  to  various  persons 
throughout  the  island,  and  thus  placed  under  a  kind 
of  apprenticeship.  A  boy  and  a  girl,  the  girl  a 
Koromantyn  and  the  boy  an  Eboe,  became  part  of 
the  Governor's  household.  Whether  many  young 
people  in  this  generation  have  read  Miss  Edgeworth's 
*  Grateful  Negro '  I  am  not  prepared  to  say,  but 
those  who  have  will  recollect  how  she  contrasts  the 
Koromantyn  nature,  and  the  Eboe  nature,  making 
her  hero,  Caesar,  a  thoroughly  noble  Koromantyn, 


KOROMANTYNS-EBOES  397 

and  his  betrothed,  Clara,  the  gentlest  of  Eboe 
maidens.  Now  Miss  Edgeworth  is  perfectly  right  in 
describing  the  Koromantyn  as  fierce  and  haughty, 
and  the  Eboe,  on  the  other  hand,  as  meek  and  sub- 
missive :  where  she  errs  (from  a  historical  point  of 
view),  is  in  speaking  of  any  Koromantyn  as  a  slave 
at  all.  When  they  fall  into  our  hands,  they  are 
willing  enough  to  be  soldiers,  and  they  become  good 
soldiers  in  the  West  Indian  regiments,  but  slaves 
they  never  would  be — they  either  committed  suicide, 
or  pined  away  in  silent  despair,  so  that  their  value  in 
the  market  amounted  to  nothing,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  nobody  would  buy  them.  The  Governor's 
Koromantyn  girl,  as  we  shall  see,  possessed  in  a 
high  degree  the  natural  attributes  of  her  people.  In 
obedience  to  them,  she  took  a  fancy  into  her  head 
that  the  Eboe  boy,  whom  from  the  heights  of  her 
Koromantyn  self-esteem  she  utterly  despised,  had 
gradually  become  a  greater  favourite  than  she  was. 
This  being  so,  she  at  once  determined  upon  revenge. 
Having  manufactured  a  sort  of  sabre  out  of  the  iron 
hoops  of  a  puncheon,  she  cut  her  rival  down  with  a 
severe  blow  upon  the  head — as  a  mere  matter  of  course. 
Then,  rushing  into  the  room  of  the  august  brown 
housekeeper,  she  dragged  all  the  best  clothes  out  of  the 
drawers,  and  tore  them  to  shreds.  These  facts  having 
been  accomplished,  she  marched  in  stately  dignity  out 
of  doors,  and  sat  down  in  the  bush,  crooning  out  a 
wild  sort  of  hymn.  The  housekeeper  stood  weeping 
over  the  fragments  of  her  gowns,  the  Eboe  boy  was 


398  SUICIDE  PREVENTED 

plastering  up  his  head,  and  the  Governor  writing  his 
despatches,  so  that  nobody  took  much  notice,  till  the 
old  sergeant-major  of  the  Black  regiment,  quartered 
in  the  town,  came  to  the  Governor,  and  asked  if  he 
knew  what  the  girl  was  doing.  '  No ;  how  should 
I  ?  '  was  the  natural  reply.  '  Well,  sir,  she  is  singing 
the  death-chant  of  our  race,  and  unless  prevented, 
will  certainly  make  away  with  herself.'  Now,  the 
Governor  had  much  experience  of  life,  and  had  learnt 
that  the  nature  of  women,  under  whatever  coloured 
skin  it  hides  itself,  is  everywhere  much  the  same,  so 
he  knew  how  to  talk  to  her.  '  What  are  you  about  ? ' 
he  shouted  out,  '  making  that  hideous  hullabulloo  so 
near  my  window  ?  Can't  you  see  that  you  hinder 
me  from  writing  my  letters?  If  you  mu'st  grunt 
like  a  hog  in  a  high  wind,  go  further  off,  and  make 
those  ridiculous  noises  as  long  as  you  please  ! ' 
This  unsentimental  way  of  looking  at  matters  fell 
upon  the  grim  excitement  of  the  young  savage  like 
a  bucket  of  cold  water,  so  she  gathered  herself  up, 
and  lurched  sullenly  back  into  the  house.  A  cabinet 
council  being  then  held  under  the  auspices  of  the 
sergeant-major,  the  final  result  was  that  this  Koro- 
mantyn  Camilla,  on  receiving  a  humble  apology  from 
the  Eboe  boy  for  having  given  her  the  trouble  to  cut 
him  down,  a  humble  apology  from  the  brown  house- 
keeper, because  it  was  her  fault  that  she  had  tired 
herself  in  tearing  all  those  gowns  and  petticoats  in 
pieces,  and  a  humble  apology  from  the  Governor 
for  interfering  with  her  magnanimous  projects  of  self- 


THE  HEKOINE  BECOMES  A  WASHERWOMAN     399 

destruction,  consented  to  survive.  She  afterwards 
married  a  Koromantyn  fellow-countryman — one  of 
the  Koromantyn  soldiers,  and  vented  her  superfluous 
energies  on  other  clothes  in  a  more  peaceful  fashion. 
She  flourished  for  many  years  as  the  best  washer- 
woman on  the  island.  I  shall  conclude  this  chapter 
by  a  poem  of  mine  written  in  honour  of  the  quick 
march  of  the  14th  regiment  mentioned  above.  It  is 
interesting  to  me,  over  and  above  its  own  merits, 
whatever  they  may  be,  on  this  account.  My  grand- 
father, a  poor  man,  provided  each  of  his  sons  with  a 
fitting;  career,  and  then  left  the  whole  of  his  small 

O  ' 

fortune,  quite  fairly,  between  his  two  daughters  ;  so 
that  the  ten  guineas  I  received  from  the  editor  of 
the  '  Cornhill  Magazine  '  for  the  verses  before  us,  con- 
stitute the  whole  of  my  grandpaternal  inheritance. 
This  gives  them  in  my  eyes  a  certain  distinction. 

THE  QUICK  MARCH  OF  THE  FOURTEENTH 
REGIMENT. 

[On  May  23,  1793,  my  grandfather  Welbore  Ellis  Doyle  rallied  his  regi- 
ment— the  14th  of  the  Line — then  wavering  under  a  heavy  fire,  and  stormed 
the  fortified  camp  of  Famars,  after  a  very  severe  action,  to  the  tune  of  Co, 
ira.  For  many  years  this  tune  continued  to  be  the  quick  march  of  the 
14th  regiment.  I  understand  that  of  late  years  the  tradition  has  ceased 
to  operate,  and  that  the  march  is  disused,  or,  at  least,  that  its  origin  has 
been  forgotten.] 

When  first  the  might  of  France  was  set 
'Gainst  creeds  and  laws,  long  years  ago, 
And  the  great  strife — not  ended  yet — 
Tossed  crowns  and  nations  to  and  fro, 
Now  buried  deep  beneath  those  wars, 
That  since  have  made  the  earth  their  prey, 
Our  hard- won  triumph  at  Famars 
Was  famous  in  its  day. 


400  BATTLE  OF  FAMARS 

Here — trained  through  steadfast  work,  and  drilled 
Till  as  one  thought  they  moved  along, 
By  the  old  land's  old  memories  filled, 
Our  English  lads  were  calm  and  strong. 
There — drunk  on  hope  as  on  new  wine, 
That  in  their  veins  like  madness  wrought, 
"With  power  half-devilish,  half  divine, 
Each  restless  Frenchman  fought. 

Wealth,  numbers,  skill  they  heeded  not, 
Trampling  them  down  as  common  things  ; 
Man's  spirit  was  a  fire,  made  hot 
To  burn  away  the  strength  of  kings. 
Thus  armed,  as  roars  before  the  blast, 
At  forest  trees  a  prairie  flame, 
On  our  firm  silence,  fiercely  fast 
Their  howling  frenzy  came — 

Until  (why  shun  the  truth  to  speak  ?) 
The  courage  rooted  in  the  past 
Struck,  as  by  sudden  storms,  grew  weak, 
And  wavered  like  a  wavering  mast : 
Still  kept  their  time  the  well-taught  feet, 
Nor  dreamed  the  soldier  yet  of  flight, 
Though  deepening  shadows  of  defeat 
Fell  on  him,  like  a  blight. 

Straight  out  in  front  their  leader  dashed 

(A  God-given  king  of  men  was  he), 

And  from  his  bright  looks  on  them  flashed 

One  sparkle  of  heroic  glee  : 

'  They  hold  us  cheap '  (he  cried)  '  too  soon, 

'  We'll  break  them,  frantic  as  they  are, 

*  Unto  their  own  accursed  tune  ; 

1  Strike  up  then  fa  ira.' 

The  drums  exulting  thundered  forth, 
Whilst  yet  with  trumpet  tones  he  spoke, 
And  in  those  strong  sons  of  the  North 
The  old  Berserker  laugh  awoke. 


LINE  FROM  'ROKEBY'  401 

Their  bayonets  glowed  with  life,  their  eyes 
Shone  out  to  greet  that  eagle  glance, 
And,  in  her  rush,  a  strange  surprise 
Palsied  the  steps  of  France. 

Then,  like  a  stream  that  bursts  its  banks,1 
To  @a  ira  from  fifes  and  drums, 
Upon  their  crushed  and  shattered  ranks 
The  cataract  charge  of  England  comes  ; 
Whilst  their  own  conquering  music  leapt 
Forth  in  wild  mirth  to  feel  them  run  ; 
Right  o'er  the  ridge  that  host  was  swept, 
And  the  grim  battle  won. 

Thus,  in  the  face  of  heaven  and  earth, 
From  their  first  home  those  notes  he  tore, 
To  live,  as  by  a  second  birth, 
Linked  fast  with  England  evermore. 
Yes,  evermore,  that  through  them  still 
To  coming  ages  might  be  shown, 
Whose  arrowy  thought  and  iron  will 
Had  made  that  prize  his  own. 

Thence,  as  each  panting  year  rushed  by 
With  garments  rolled  in  blood — His  march 
Went  sounding  onwards,  far  and  nigh — 
Beneath  cold  rains,  or  suns  that  parch, 
Northward  or  southward — east  or  west, 
Where  still  the  heirs  of  that  renown, 
Behind  some  other  colonel,  pressed 
To  the  field  hurrying  down. 

For  him,  alas  ;  on  Java's  shore 
It  throbbed  unheard  through  purple  skies, 
Nor  marked  he,  under  dark  Bhurtpore, 
The  blood-bought  battle-hymn  arise. 

1  This  line  is  from  Rokeby.  I  borrowed  it  unconsciously  at  the 
moment,  and  thought  afterwards  that  Scott  was  quite  rich  enough  to 
lend  it  to  me  without  feeling  the  loss. 


402  BATTLE  OF  WATERLOO 

New  Zealand's  fern-gloom,  as  they  stept, 
Might  quiver  to  that  piercing  tone, 
But  him  it  stirred  not,  where  he  slept 
In  a  far  land — alone. 

And,  whilst  o'er  its  old  ground,  the  strain 
Smote  with  high  scorn  our  ancient  foe, 
Called  he  upon  those  drums  again  ? 
Shared  he  their  closing  rapture  1    No  ! 
His  grave  lay  deep  in  dust,  before 
They  pealed  through  Belgian  corn- crops,  when 
The  baffled  Eagle  fell,  no  more 
To  tear  the  hearts  of  men. 

Yes,  he  died  young,  and  all  in  vain 

We  dream  how  much  he  left  undone, 

Painting,  upon  an  idle  brain, 

The  glorious  course  he  should  have  run. 

Forgotten  by  the  reckless  years, 

He  rests  apart — and  makes  no  sign — 

Even  his  proud  march  no  longer  cheers 

The  fourteenth  of  the  Line. 

Still,  if  elsewhere  of  this  no  trace 
Remain,  by  some  as  worthy  deed, 
Oh,  youthful  soldiers  of  his  race, 
Against  oblivion  for  it  plead, 
Thus,  if  his  death-lamp  have  grown  dim 
Re-light  it ;  thus  force  Time  to  spare 
This  leaf  of  laurel,  earned  by  him 
For  the  old  name  we  bear. 


EPILOGUE. 

My  feelings  about  Home  Rule  and  other  political  questions — Distrust 
of  Mr.  Gladstone — Correspondence  with  him  in  1880 — Its  effect  upon 
my  mind — The  death  of  Henry  Taylor — My  view  of  his  character 
and  talents — Weather  reminiscences — Story  from  Cavendish's  '  Life 
of  Wolsey  ' — Conclusion. 

I  HAD,  as  I  said  before,  given  up  all  thoughts  of  pub- 
lishing these  Recollections  of  my  life.  One  or  two 
friends,  as  candid  friends  are  apt  to  do,  agreed  with 
me  that  the  absence  of  a  diary,  and  also  the  absence 
of  letters  throwing  light  upon  the  scenes  as  they 
moved  along,  impaired  the  value  of  the  work  so  much 
that  it  was  not  likely  to  interest  the  general  reader. 
But  since  then  an  unexpected  offer  from  Messrs. 
Longman  has  induced  me  to  alter  my  plans. 

On  reading  the  papers  over,  I  feel  even  more 
vividly  than  I  did  three  years  ago,  that  it  would 
have  been  better  if  these  reminiscences  had  been 
offered  to  the  world  at  a  much  earlier  period.  Events 
move  so  rapidly  through  these  troubled  years,  that 
beliefs  and  impressions  natural  enough  in  1882  and 
1883  seem  quite  out  of  date  in  1886.  Nay,  more 
than  this,  in  spite  of  the  clouds  gathering  round  us 
from  every  quarter,  we  can  attend  to  one  subject 
only,  the  fearful  subject  of  Home  Rule.  If  other  evils 


404     HOME  KULE  AND  MR.  GLADSTONE 

threaten  us,  as  they  do  threaten  us,  we  must  await 
their  coming,  and  then  parry  them  as  best  we  may. 
Perhaps  my  enforced  absence  from  London  in  con- 
sequence of  failing  health  may  render  me  unfit  to 
enter,  at  any  length,  into  the  discussions  of  the  day, 
still  I  cannot  hand  over  my  papers  to  Mr.  Longman 
without  to  a  certain  extent  recasting  them,  especially 
without  saying  a  word  or  two  about  the  alarming 
changes  that  have  taken  place  since  I  laid  aside  my 
pen.  For  one  thing,  it  is  extremely  painful  to  me 
that  I  have  to  struggle  with  a  continually  increasing 
dislike  to  Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  statesman,  and  a  con- 
tinually deepening  distrust  of  his  character  as  a  man. 

Old  associations  and  old  recollections  fight  hard 
against  my  present  instinct,  so  that  my  heart  is  filled 
with  mixed  feelings  of  angry  amazement  and  of 
genuine  sorrow.  If,  indeed,  Mr.  Gladstone  should 
turn  out  to  be  what  many  think  him,  a  really  great 
statesman,  and  not  what  I  now  consider  him,  a 
parliamentary  rhetorician,  liable  to  be  tossed  about 
from  one  side  to  the  other  by  every  gust  of  impulse ; 
if  hereafter  he  is  able  to  say  triumphantly,  '  Look 
round  and  judge  me  by  the  result/  I  will  read  my 
recantation,  not  only  with  readiness,  but  with  real 
pleasure.  The  renewal  of  our  youthful  affection, 
before  I  die,  would  be  as  welcome  to  me,  as  the 
freshness  of  some  unexpected  fountain  to  a  solitary 
traveller  toiling  through  the  desert,  but  such  a  foun- 
tain I  do  not  now  hope  to  light  upon. 

And  now  to  go  back  for  some  years.    In  1879  I  was 


GO  TO  MADEIRA— LETTER  TO  MR.  GLADSTONE  405 

taken  ill  with  acute  congestion  of  the  lungs.  This  being 
so,  in  the  beginning  of  1880  I  was  sent  off  to  Madeira, 
and  whilst  I  was  there  the  general  election  took  place 
which  brought  Mr.  Gladstone  back  into  power.  I  had 
long  ceased  to  be  an  adherent  of  his.  And,  moreover, 
we  had  drifted  asunder  a  good  deal  before  the  vary- 
ing  currents  of  life.  Nevertheless  our  personal  friend- 
ship had  not  then  disappeared.  I  therefore  thought 
myself  justified  in  writing  a  letter  to  him,  when  he 
became  once  more,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  the 
ruler  of  England.  This  was  the  substance,  and  as 
far  as  I  can  recollect  it,  the  wording  of  the  letter  in 
question.  '  You  are,'  I  said,  *  about  to  become  the 
strongest  prime  minister  that  has  been  seen  for  many 
years.  You  are  now  an  advanced,  and  ever  advancing 
Liberal.  Do  you  recollect,  forty  years  ago  and  more, 
speaking  to  me  thus  :  "A  Scotch  Tory  is  worse  than 
an  English  Whig  ;  a  Scotch  Whig  is  worse  than  an 
English  Radical ;  and  a  Scotch  Radical  worse  than 
the  Devil  himself"  ?  And  now,  because  Scotland  has 
surrendered  herself  to  that  sulphureous  element,  you 
quote  poor  Lady  Nairne's  verses  only  to  misapply 
them,  and  make  her  call  this  infernal  region  of  yours 
"  the  Land  of  the  Leal."  l  I  will  not  say  you  were 
right  then,  I  will  not  say  you  are  wrong  now,  but 
don't  you  think  this  a  good  opportunity  to  pause  for 
a  moment  to  look  back  across  the  immense  space,  from 
Toryism  to  Radicalism,  which  you  have  traversed  in 

1  Her  phrase  for  heaven — quite  a  different  place  from  a  Radica 
Scotch  borough. 


406  CLASSES  AND  MASSES 

the  course  of  your  political  career,  that  you  may  then 
reconsider  your  position  ?  For  God's  sake  have  a 
care,  or 

The  curse  that  lights  on  Cava's  '  head, 
It  may  be  shared  by  thee.' 

Mr.  Gladstone  answered  my  letter  with  his  usual 
courtesy,  but  did  not  seem  inclined  to  listen  to  my 
advice  ;  indeed  he  tried  to  deny  that  he  had  made 
any  such  statement.  This  is  all  very  well,  but,  as  a 
distinguished  neighbour  of  mine  appositely  remarked, 
*  A  rifle  may  forget  that  it  has  gone  off,  but  if  it  hits 
the  target,  there  the  impression  remains.' 

And  in  this  case  my  memory  is  such  a  target. 
From  that  period  the  political  alienation  between  us 
has  gone  on  increasing,  till  it  is  now  complete,  and  I 
must  confess  that  when  I  read  one  of  his  strange  and 
perplexing  letters  to  some  Home  Rule  supporter,  it 
becomes,  for  the  moment,  something  more  than  a 
mere  political  alienation.  Mr.  Gladstone's  conduct, 
perhaps  from  the  narrowness  and  shallowness  of  my 
intellect,  is  unintelligible  to  me.  The  great  desire 
of  a  good  citizen  should  be  to  fill  up,  as  far  as 
possible,  the  gulfs  that  separate  one  set  of  Englishmen 
from  another.  Mr.  Gladstone  has  no  such  desire, 
but  aims  apparently  at  making  them  still  wider  and 
deeper  than  they  are.  Is  that  a  temper  suitable  for  an 
English  prime  minister  ?  But  I  shall  refrain  in  this 
part  of  the  book  from  discussing  at  any  length  the 

1  The  daughter  of  the  Spanish  Count  Julian.      See  Lockhart's 
BaUada. 


MR.  PITT  AND  HOME  RULE  407 

political  questions  now  before  the  country.  I  cannot 
trust  myself  to  write  about  them  temperately,  and 
enough  has  been  said  about  them  by  others  elsewhere. 
Still  I  think,  as  far  as  Home  Rule  is  concerned,  Mr. 
Gladstone  ought  to  be  reminded,  that  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century  we  had  to  face  the  Jacobin  incendiaries 
of  France ;  we  had  also  to  face  the  unrivalled  military 
genius  and  unscrupulous  ambition  of  Bonaparte ;  we 
were,  in  point  of  fact,  engaged  hi  a  desperate  struggle 
to  maintain  the  existence  of  England.  Now,  if  you 
have  to  prevent  a  terrible  fire  from  spreading,  you  must 
extinguish  it  as  best  you  can,  and  all  scruples  must 
be  put  aside.  Mr.  Pitt  was  neither  a  corrupt  nor  a 
profligate  minister,  and  if  he  resorted  to  questionable 
means  in  bringing  about  the  Union,  it  was  because  he 
had  no  choice  open  to  him.  He  thought,  and  I  be- 
lieve thought  rightly,  that  such  a  measure  was  neces- 
sary to  save  his  country,  and  that  his  country  must 
be  saved.  At  any  rate  we  have  now  to  think  of  the 
England  of  1886,  not  of  1800,  and  if  Mr.  Gladstone 
begins  to  enter  upon  a  retrograde  course,  because  the 
conduct  of  certain  statesmen  was  not  to  his  taste  three 
generations  ago,  where  is  he  to  stop?  Boadicea  and 
Caractacus  were  ill-treated  by  the  Romans,  is  Mr. 
Gladstone  prepared  to  call  upon  the  King  of  Italy  for 
compensation  in  consequence?  Hengist  and  Horsa 
behaved  to  the  British  King  Vortigern  with  brutal 
cruelty  and  treachery,  but  would  that  justify  Mr. 
Osborne  Morgan  in  embodying  all  the  Radical  Jones's 
and  Evans's  throughout  the  Principality,  to  drive 
27 


408  MR.  GOLDWIN  SMITH  AND  GUIZOT 

Queen  Victoria  from  her  throne  ?  We  believe,  as 
according  to  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  Guizot  believed, 
the  empire  of  England,  in  spite  of  many  errors  and 
shortcomings,  to  be  upon  the  whole  an  honest  and 
benevolent  empire,  and  as  such  of  use  to  mankind.  We 
cannot  therefore  suffer  it  to  be  shattered  into  ruin, 
because  eighty- six  years  ago  something  happened 
which  does  not  harmonise  with  Mr.  Gladstone's 
exquisite  moral  sensibilities.  I  should  have  thought 
that  the  parading  of  this  phantom  argument  to  the 
sound  of  drums  and  trumpets,  in  front  of  his  new 
Parnellite  theories,  would  have  been  felt  by  him,  a 
consummate  rhetorician,  as  surely  suggesting  to  men 
governed  by  common  sense,  that  he  has  no  solid 
reasons  behind  it.  Enough,  however,  of  this  ;  I  have 
already  said  more  than  I  intended. 

The  only  personal  event  of  much  interest,  at  once 
to  myself  and  to  the  public  at  large,  which  has  taken 
place  of  late,  is  the  recent  departure  of  my  dear  friend 
Henry  Taylor.  His  life  was  full  of  honour  and  the 
close  of  it  thoroughly  to  be  envied.  In  the  midst  of 
a  loving  family  he  went,  without  a  pang  or  a  struggle, 
into  the  rest  of  death.  His  reputation  as  a  man  of 
letters,  though  perhaps  of  slow  growth,  is  destined, 
I  think,  to  endure.  Though  a  zealous  interest  in 
literature  was  the  ruling  passion  of  his  nature,  I  know 
no  one,  since  Walter  Scott,  who  rose,  above  the  ordi- 
nary defects  of  the  literary  character,  more  thoroughly 
and  nobly.  Jealousy  and  vanity  were  unknown  to 
him,  and  if  a  man  cannot  be  a  poet  without  belonging 


HENRY  TAYLOR  AS  A  MAN  OF  LETTERS      409 

to  the  'genus  irritabile,'  a  poet  he  was  not.  His 
genius,  in  truth,  if  not  of  the  highest  order,  had 
nothing  in  common  with  the  genius  of  disease ;  on 
the  contrary,  it  was  braced  and  strengthened  by 
great  general  ability,  a  sound  judgment,  and  a  mas- 
culine good  sense.  Of  course,  as  to  his  purely  poetical 
gifts,  I  do  not  put  him  on  a  level  with  Tennyson. 
Still,  '  Philip  Van  Artevelde '  is  one  of  the  most  con- 
siderable works  belonging  to  the  Victorian  epoch, 
and  will  not  be  soon  or  easily  forgotten.  The  main 
defect  of  his  mind  was,  I  think,  a  certain  narrow- 
ness of  intellectual  sympathy.  He  cared  a  great 
deal  for  many  things,  but  what  he  did  not  care  a 
great  deal  for,  he  put  aside  as  if  it  had  no  existence. 
He  therefore  allowed  sundry  subjects,  which  might 
have  brought  him,  a  dramatic  poet,  into  closer  and 
more  cordial  intercourse  with  varieties  of  men,  to  lie 
outside  his  ken,  and  this  limited  hi  some  degree  his 
reach  of  imagination,  and  his  powers  of  thought.  He 
has  spoken  for  himself  in  his  memoirs,  so  that  these 
remarks  are  perhaps  superfluous,  but  I  could  not  pass 
over  the  loss  of  so  dear  a  friend  in  silence,  and  there- 
fore record  my  opinion  of  him  for  what  it  is  worth. 

I  said  at  the  beginning  of  the  book  that  I  con- 
sidered this  composition  of  mine  rather  as  the  dis- 
tillation of  a  life-talk  than  as  belonging  to  any  one 
of  the  recognised  forms  of  literature.  That  being  so, 
it  is  impossible  for  me  to  leave  our  British  weather 
unnoticed. 

Affectionate  foreigners  are  apt  to  say  that  weather 


410  BKITISH  WEATHER— SPRING  OP  1832 

is  the  only  subject  adequately  treated  of  in  our  English 
conversations,  thereby  graciously  implying  that  what 
we  call  our  minds  are  too  dull  and  clumsy  to  ex- 
change ideas  with  French  wits  or  German  thinkers, 
on  matters  of  greater  interest.  There  are,  I  believe, 
extenuating  circumstances  which  I  may  refer  to 
by-and  by.  At  present,  however,  I  admit  that  we 
do  make  a  great  many  observations  about  east  winds 
and  west  winds,  ram.  and  sunshine,  observations 
which  very  likely  seem  tiresome  to  persons  not  so 
dependent  as  ourselves  on  sudden  changes  of  climate. 
Therefore  I  agree  with  those  Frenchmen,  who  habi- 
tually, in  accordance  with  their  claim  to  take  rank  as 
the  best-bred  people  in  Europe,  make  use  of  the 
polite  phrase,  'bete  comme  un  Anglais,'  that  an 
English  life-talk  would  be  ill  represented,  if  weather 
topics  were  entirely  shut  out.  The  spring  of  1832 
was  more  beautiful  than  any  spring  that  I  remember, 
either  before  or  after  it.  Throughout  the  whole 
month  of  May,  from  morning  to  evening,  the  sun 
shone  brilliantly,  though  a  soft  west  wind  kept  the 
air  tolerably  cool ;  but  every  night  the  clouds 
gathered,  and  heavy  rain  fell  till  shortly  before  dawn. 
The  result  was  an  affluence  of  bloom,  and  a  splendour 
of  vegetation  that  made  England  look  more  like 
what  we  conceive  the  Elysian  Fields  to  have  been, 
than  her  own  blight-parched  and  frost-bitten  self. 

In  the  winter  of  1839  I  fell  in  with  the  most 
tremendous  hurricane  that  it  has  ever  been  my  lot 
to  encounter.  I  was  then  staying  at  Cantley,  near 


LORD  HOUGHTON  IN  SEARCH  OF  A  BEDROOM  411 

Doncaster.  As  my  room  did  not  look  windwards, 
no  evil  happened  to  me,  but  I  dreamt  that  I  was 
at  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  and  started  up  in  bed, 
to  listen  to  a  roar  outside,  that  was  not  a  bad  imita- 
tion of  the  artillery  I  had  fancied  it  to  be.  My  friend 
Lord  Houghton,  less  fortunate  than  myself,  was  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  house.  He  got  alarmed  at 
the  extraordinary  fury  of  the  gale,  and  moved  for  a 
moment  into  the  passage  for  the  purpose  of  recon- 
noitring, when  lo  and  behold,  his  windows  were 
suddenly  blown  in,  and  the  storm  settled  with  forty- 
horse  power  upon  his  room  door.  In  the  said  passage 
he  had  to  remain  helpless  and  hopeless.  I  suppose, 
after  a  time,  he  got  some  sort  of  shelter  for  the  rest 
of  the  night,  but  how  and  where  I  never  inquired. 
The  number  of  trees  blown  down  all  over  England 
was  almost  beyond  belief,  and  I  doubt  whether,  since 
the  tempest  spoken  of  by  Addison  in  his  '  Blen- 
heim,' '  pale  Britannia '  has  ever  experienced  such 
a  shaking. 

The  winter  of  1838  was  extremely  severe.  On  one 
of  the  coldest  mornings,  the  Bishop  of  London  asked 
his  Fulham  gardener  what  sort  of  a  night  it  had  been. 
The  answer  came  at  once  :  '  Oh,  cruel  cold,  cruel  cold 
indeed,  my  lord;  five  degrees  below  Nero.  The  Thames 
was  frozen  over  more  or  less,  and  many  years  after- 
wards I  became  cognizant  of  an  act  of  civil  courage 
and  devotion  to  duty  which  I  am  glad  to  record. 
The  Custom  House  during  that  winter  was  burnt 
down.  Mr.  Miller,  a  clerk  in  the  Receiver-General's 


412       WINTER  OF  1838-GREAT  THUNDERSTORM 

office,  whose  home  was  on  the  southern  side  of  the 
river,  made  his  way  through  the  uncertain  light  of 
a  winter  morning  over  hummocks  and  untrustworthy 
masses  of  ice,  and  thereby  succeeded  in  saving  many 
important  papers  and  documents  which  otherwise 
must  have  been  consumed. 

On  August  1,  1846,  London  was  visited  by  a 
thunderstorm  of  tropical  intensity.  I  say  London 
because  I  met  it  there,  but  it  extended  far  and  wide. 
The  whole  of  July  had  been  extremely  hot  and  dry, 
and  the  ground  was  thoroughly  burnt  up.  On  the 
morning  of  August  1, 1  looked  in  at  the  Chess  Club, 
then  in  Cavendish  Square,  on  my  way  to  the  city.  The 
atmosphere  was  oppressive,  gloomy,  and  quite  still, 
wjth  a  rayless  sun,  in  outward  appearance  such  as  we 
see  more  often  in  winter  than  in  summer,  ploughing 
its  way  every  now  and  then  through  a  continually 
increasing  haze,  and  then  swallowed  up  by  it  over 
and  over  again,  till  all  at  once,  as  I  have  described  it 
in  a  ballad  of  mine  (being  a  poet,  or  poetaster  if  you 
like,  I  naturally  bottled  my  storm,  for  future  use). 

Then  came  the  lightning's  blinding  flash, 

Which  like  some  magic  key, 
Flung  wide  the  dungeons  of  the  air 

And  set  the  tempest  free. 

A  howling  wind  started  up  immediately,  as  if  the* 
thunder  had  summoned  it  ;  flashes  of  lightning  leapt 
out  all  round  the  horizon,  three  or  four  at  a  tune ; 
hailstones  of  unusual  size  rattled  down  in  thousands, 
and  were  instantly  followed  up  by  a  perfect  deluge  of 


EIGHT  FEET  OF  WATER  IN  THE  KITCHEN      413 

rain  which  lasted  for  several  hours.  When  I  got 
away  to  my  club,  at  about  eight  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  I  naturally  asked  for  some  dinner.  The 
answer  was,  '  We  will  do  what  we  can  for  you, 
Sir  Francis,  but  there  will  be  some  little  difficulty 
in  the  matter,  as  we  have  eight  feet  water  in  the 
kitchen.'  Some  cold  beef,  however,  had  escaped 
destruction,  and  a  man  who  never  gets  anything  worse 
than  cold  beef  for  his  dinner  is  not  entitled  to 
complain. 

My  uncle  in  Yorkshire,  after  that  thunderstorm, 
secured,  under  what  I  believe  to  be  unusual  circum- 
stances, a  capital  crop  of  barley,  but  not  being  an 
agriculturist,  I  can  only  state  the  facts,  and  leave 
experts  to  judge  of  it.  The  first  growth,  whatever  it 
may  have  been,  was  entirely  ruined  by  the  heat  and 
drought.  He  then  broke  up  the  soil  with  some  kind  of 
clod- crusher,  and  put  down  fresh  seed  in  the  hope  of 
rain.  The  rain,  as  I  have  stated,  came  with  a  vengeance. 
It  was  followed  by  alternate  showers  and  sunshine  for 
a  certain  number  of  days  ;  after  that,  real  hot  weather 
renewed  itself,  so  that  the  late- sown  barley  prospered, 
and  was  harvested  at  last,  before  the  autumn  chills 
arrived,  in  excellent  condition.  The  most  terrible 
winter  since  the  one  of  1814  (of  which  I  retain  a  re- 
collection, but  only  a  faint  recollection),  was  that 
known  as  the  Crimean  winter.  The  end  of  December 
and  the  first  thirteen  days  of  January  might  be 
described  as  absolute  summer.  If  we  always  had 
equally  good  weather  in  May  or  June,  we  might  be 


414  CRIMEAN  WINTER-DEVONSHIRE  SUPERSTITION 

well  content,  but  during  the  night  of  the  13th  the 
wind  shifted  suddenly  to  the  NNE.,  and  a  savage 
frost  came  on,  which  lasted  for  at  least  two  months 
without  intermission  or  abatement.  It  was  accom- 
panied, or  rather  preceded,  by  the  heaviest  snow- 
storm of  my  tune.  In  Devonshire,  where  I  was 
temporarily  residing,  the  unexplained  footmarks  of 
some  strange  animal  which  neither  gamekeeper  nor 
poacher  could  identify,  struck  terror  into  the  hearts 
of  the  then  unenfranchised  masses,  and  it  was  gene- 
rally believed  throughout  the  West,  that  the  Devil  had 
come  up,  in  accordance  with  Milton's  suggestion, 

From  beds  of  raging  fire,  to  starve  (quaere,  cool)  in  ice 
His  soft  ethereal  warmth. 

I  do  not  believe  that  this  pious  imagination, 
though  sceptics  may  affirm  that  it  does  not  rest  upon 
sufficient  evidence,  has  ever  been  positively  dis- 
proved. 

But  though  the  Crimean  winter  may  have  been 
the  longest  and  hardest  known  for  many  years,  the 
greatest  cold  of  the  century  took  place  on  December 
25,  1860.  The  thermometer  fell  in  many  places  to 
15°  below  zero — or  Nero  (really  a  better  name,  I  think) 
according  to  the  Fulham  gardener.  To  match  it 
we  must  go  back,  I  believe,  to  1783,  when  the  ther- 
mometer is  said  to  have  fallen  to  the  lowest  point 
ever  recorded  in  England.  The  Wolf-month,  as  the 
Saxons  called  January,  still  shows  us  every  now  and 
then  that  it  can  bite  hard  if  it  likes. 


WOLSEY'S  WAY  OF  CONVERSING  WITH  FRENCHMEN  415 

And  now  I  think  I  have  done  my  duty  to  the 
weather  like  a  true  British  talker.  I  do  not,  however, 
mean  to  leave  the  subject  without  remarking  that  the 
Frenchman  who  holds  our  conversational  powers,  as  a 
rule,  to  be  so  limited,  often  knows  nothing  of  any  lan- 
guage but  his  own,  and  he  ought  to  consider  that  we 
are  somewhat  unfairly  handicapped,  when  our  foreign 
humming  and  hawing  is  pitted  against  his  native 
fluency.  I  lighted  on  a  passage  the  other  day  in 
Cavendish's  *  Life  of  Wolsey,'  which  amused  me  at  the 
time,  and  is  not  inapplicable  to  the  question  before  us. 
When  sent  as  ambassador  to  France,  his  address  to 
his  secretaries  and  assistants  contains  the  following 

o 

passage :  '  Now  to  the  point  of  the  Frenchman's  nature, 
ye  shall  understand  that  their  disposition  is  such,  that 
they  will  be  at  the  first  meeting  as  familiar  with  you 
as  they  had  been  acquainted  with  you  long  before,  and 
commune  with  you  in  the  French  tongue  as  though 
ye  understood  every  word  they  spake  ;  therefore  in 
like  manner,  be  ye  as  familiar  with  them  again  as 
they  be  with  you.  If  they  speak  to  you  in  the  French 
tongue,  speak  you  to  them  in  the  English  tongue  • 
for  if  you  understand  not  them,  they  shall  no  more 
understand  you.'  And  my  lord,  speaking  merrily 
to  one  of  the  gentlemen  there,  being  a  Welshman, 
'  Rice,'  quoth  he,  *  speak  thou  Welsh  to  him,  and  I 
am  well  assured  that  thy  Welsh  shall  be  more  diffuse 
to  him  than  his  French  shall  be  to  thee.'  I  hope 
that  the  Parisian  sneerers  at  us  tongue-tied  English- 
men,  if  ever  the  above  speech  is  brought  before 


416         YORKSHIRE  PEASANT'S  ACCOUNT-BOOK 

them,  will  meditate  thereupon,  and  acknowledge  that 
Wolsey,  after  all,  had  some  reason  on  his  side. 

And  now,  what  more  have  I  to  say  ?  So  much 
only.  I  have  already  admitted  that  this  composition 
of  mine  is  rambling  and  disjointed  in  point  of  style 
and  method,  but  one  or  two  of  the  anecdotes  I  have 
preserved  may  perhaps  give  the  book  a  certain  value 
for  historical  purposes,  during  the  twentieth  century, 
and  as  I  could  not  have  written  on  any  other  lines 
than  those  I  have  adopted,  the  reader  of  the  nine- 
teenth must  take  the  work  or  leave  it  as  he  pleases. 
When  George  Lewis  sent  me,  as  I  have  already 
mentioned,  on  a  poor-law  expedition  into  Yorkshire 
and  Northumberland,  the  most  valuable  document  I 
brought  home  with  me  was  the  account-book  of  a 
sensible  Yorkshire  peasant.  Marmaduke  Constable, 
an  odd,  but  original  and  thoughtful  squire,  said  to 
this  man,  'Now,  Allen,  if  you  will  keep  your  ac- 
counts accurately  and  carefully  for  a  whole  year,  I 
will  give  you  five  pounds.'  The  thing  was  done, 
and  this  record  of  the  manner  in  which  an  honest 
and  industrious  Yorkshire  labourer  lived  during  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  preserved  in  my 
report.  I  thought  at  the  time  that  if  similar  records,  up 
to  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  let  us  say,  could 
be  anywhere  unearthed,  though  the  larger  part  might 
amount  to  little  or  nothing,  we  should  know  a  great  deal 
well  worth  knowing,  of  which  we  are  now  completely 
ignorant.  So  also,  in  a  book  like  mine,  there  may  be 
plenty  of  trash,  but  in  the  midst  of  the  trash  there 


HISTORICAL  AGATES  AND  CORNELIANS  TO  GORDON  417 

will  be  found  anecdotes  and  incidents,  the  value  of 
which  will  discover  itself  hereafter,  just  as  in  a  con- 
fused mass  of  shingle,  an  agate  here  and  a  cornelian 
there,  though  differing  little  in  outward  aspect 
from  the  flints  among  which  they  lie  scattered,  when 
selected  and  examined,  reveal  themselves,  and  take  a 
higher  rank,  becoming  seals  or  ornaments,  and  living 
on  for  an  indefinite  number  of  years.  I  am  too  old 
and  worn  out  to  care  much  whether  this  book  is  a 
literary  success  or  not,  but  I  shall  be  glad  to  believe 
that  a  few  of  these  historical  agates  and  cornelians 
will  be  saved  for  the  sake  of  others  and  set  in  order, 
because  I  have  noticed  them  here.  I  should  have 
been  glad  if  I  could  have  ended  thus ;  but  no 
Englishman,  I  should  think,  with  a  heart  in  his 
bosom,  writing  about  these  late  miserable  years,  can 
pass  over  in  absolute  silence  the  abandonment  and 
death  of  General  Gordon.  I  have  purposely  refrained 
from  noticing  it  in  my  prose  text,  because  it  drove 
me,  as  any  national  impulse  generally  does,  into 
verse  ;  and  with  these  verses,  which,  whether  good 
or  bad,  are  a  genuine  expression  of  my  inmost  feel- 
ings, I  conclude  the  records  of  my  life — the  life  of 
one  of  whom,  I  am  afraid,  his  printers  will  think  that 
he  was  justly  described  some  sixty  years  ago  by  the 
head  maid-servant  at  his  dame's  (she  had  a  great 
talent  for  superlatives)  as  *  the  ink-spillingest  boy  as 
ever  corned  to  Eton.1 


418  A  MIGHTY  LIFE  MARRED 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  GENERAL  GORDON. 
JANUARY  27,  1885. 

In  Eastern  skies  the  Dawn  grows  red, 

But  yet  yon  Heaven  itself  must  know, 
That  those  young  morning  beams  are  shed 

Upon  a  poorer  world  below  ; 
He  who  for  England,  helped  by  none, 

So  long  his  crushing  burdens  bore, 
As  grand  and  lonely  as  the  sun, 

Set  yesterday — to  rise  no  more. 

We  saw  how,  sinking  into  night, 

Unmoved  by  storms,  unchilled  by  gloom, 
That  calm  and  solitary  Light 

Grew  larger  on  the  edge  of  Doom  ; 
Alas  !  grim  floods  of  darkness  roll 

Over  his  quenched  and  shattered  Place  ; 
Death  hides  from  us  that  Hero-soul : 

The  Sun  drops  rayless  into  space. 

And  so  a  mighty  Life  is  marred 

By  Babblers,  without  heart  or  shame, 
Who  played  it,  as  men  play  a  card, 

To  win  their  worthless  Party-game  ; 
Let  them  repent ;  we  may  not  pause 

In  this  dread  hour,  to  brand  that  crime, 
But  trust  it  to  the  Eternal  Laws, 

And  to  God's  safe  avenger — Time. 

There  is  one  thought  that  fills  the  land, 
Leaving  no  room  for  aught  beside, — 

The  fate  of  him  who  built  on  sand — 
The  sand  of  shifting  souls — and  died 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  GENERAL  GORDON   419 

That  sword  of  sorrow  pierces  all, 

Yet  must  we  wrestle  with  despair, 
Lest  England,  lost  like  him,  should  fall, 

As  meteors  fall  through  midnight  air. 

Pale  England — sickening  as  she  hears 

Of  blood,  that  like  a  river  runs  ; 
And  watching,  with  wan  face,  through  tears, 

The  useless  slaughter  of  her  sons  ; 
There  moan  below  her  shaken  feet, 

Strange  earthquakes — throbbing  underground, 
And  her  eye  seeks  out — Men — to  meet 

Each  tempest,  ere  it  breaks  around. 

Oh  Mother  England  !  faint  not  yet, 

But  teach  us  how  to  strive  like  him  ; 
There  burns  a  hope  before  us  set, 

A  Beacon  never  waning  dim. 
If  we,  through  Gordon's  strength  grow  strong, 

And  nurse  within  us,  living  still, 
That  it  may  lead  our  steps  along, 

A  Presence  from  his  heart  and  will ; 

We  shall  press  forward  to  our  goal, 

Sustained  by  echoes  from  the  Past, 
Sustained  by  Him — whose  Death-notes  toll 

Sublime  as  any,  though  the  last ; 
Yes  !  we  must  follow  on  his  track, 

Like  those,  who  coming  from  afar, 
To  Bethlehem,  never  looking  back, 

Followed  in  faith  that  sudden  star. 

Then,  if  across  the  grave  should  steal 

Some  whisperings  in  an  earthly  voice, 
What  he  yet  holds  of  man  will  feel 

His  Death  not  barren,  and  rejoice ; 
And  that  he  will  hold  much,  we  know, 

Through  endless  ages  rolling  by  ; 
Though  kindled  here  on  earth  below, 

The  Light  within  him  cannot  die. 


420  THE  GORDON  HEAET 

Yes,  though  above  the  stars  he  soar, 

His  heart  its  Gordon  beat  will  keep, 
And  we  who  our  own  loss  deplore, 

Must  work — and  earn  the  right  to  weep. 
Then,  without  weakness  or  remorse, 

Tears  long  pent  up — may  well  be  shed, 
And  sorrow  take  its  natural  course, 

O'er  Him  and  them — the  Noble  Dead. 


THE  LIFE  AND  WORKS 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 

Edited  by  PARKE  GODWIN. 


A  Biography  of  William  Cullen  Bryant,  with 

Extracts  from  his  Private  Correspondence.     By  PARKE  GODWIN.     With  Two 
Portraits  on  Steel:  one  from  a  Painting  by  Morse,  taken  in  1825,  and  one 
from  a  Photograph  taken  in  1873.     In  two  vols.,  square  8vo.     Cloth,  $6.00. 
Containing  a  full  account,  from  authentic  sources,  of  the  poet's  ancestry  •  of  his 
boyhood  among  the  Hampshire  hills ;  of  his  early  poems :  of  liis  ten  years'  life  as  a 
country  lawyer ;  of  his  long  editorial  career  in  New  York ;  of  his  intercourse  with 
contemporaries;  of  his  travels  abroad  and  at  home:  of  the  origin  of  many  of  his 
poems ;  of  his  political  opinions ;  of  his  speeches  and  addresses ;  and  of  the  honors 
he  received. 

"  Perhaps  the  most  entertaining  and  delightful  memoir  of  the  present  generation,  combining, 
as  it  does,  the  charm  of  the  poet  and  the  force  of  a  publicist ;  the  freshness  and  beauty  of  the 
country,  with  the  wealth  and  refinement  of  the  city;  every  variety  of  Intellectual  life ;  social  and 
public  questions;  brilliant  conversation  and  rich  correspondence:  travel  in  foreign  lands  ;  scenes 
in  the  eve  of  a  poet  and  philosopher — all  these  and  a  host  of  other  subjects,  admirably  selected 
arranged,  and  touched,  make  up  two  charming  volumes,  which  we  have  read  with  great  inter- 
est"—New  York  Observer. 

"  Mr.  Parke  Godwin  has  done  his  work  of  love  with  remarkable  completeness.  The  biogra- 
phy is  more  than  its  name  implies.  Mr.  Bryant's  life  was  so  closely  interwoven  with  the  litera- 
ture and  politics  of  the  country  that  Mr.  Godwin's  work  becomes,  in  effect,  a  history  of  the  devel- 
opment of  thought  in  the  United  States  for  the  last  sixty  years.  On  this  account  Mr.  Godwin's 
latest  labors  are  of  extraordinary  value,  the  full  measure  of  which  can  not  now  be  estimated." — 
New  York  Journal  of  Commerce. 

n.  . 

The  Poetical  Works  of  William  Cullen  Bry- 
ant. In  two  vols.,  square  8vo,  uniform  with  the  "Biography."  Cloth, 
gilt  top,  $6.00;  half  calf  or  half  morocco,  $12.00. 

This  edition  of  Mr.  Bryant's  poems  contains:  1.  All  Mr.  Bryant's  poems  that 
have  hitherto  appeared,  with  his  latest  corrections.  2.  Sixty  or  more  never  before 
collected,  including  some  thirty  beautiful  hymns,  and  a  companion  piece  to  "  Sella" 
and  "  The  Little  People  of  the  Snow."  8.  Copious  notes  by  Parke  Godwin,  giving 
various  changes  in  the  more  important  poems,  an  account  of  their  origin,  and  other 
interesting  information. 

"  No  more  fitting  memorial  of  a  poet  could  be  devised  by  ingenuity  and  affection  combined 
than  an  edition  of  his  works  in  a  form  so  beautiful  as  this.  No  finer  specimens  of  book-making 
have  ever  issued  from  the  American  press  than  these  volumes.  The  type  is  large,  the  press- 
work  simply  perfect,  the  margins  wide  and  uncut  except  at  the  top.  and  the  binding  rich  anf 
tasteful.  Many  so-called  editions  de  luxe  are  inferior  to  this  in  real  excellence.  The  time  h» « 
not  yet  come  for  a  just  estimate  of  Bryant's  true  place  as  a  poet.  But  is  it  not  something  to  havit 
earned  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  American  poet  of  a  century  who  has  written  blank  verse 
that  will  live  In  literature  alongside  of  that  of  Wordsworth  and  Milton  ?  "—New  York  Examiner. 

m. 
Prose  Writings  of  William   Cullen    Bryant. 

In  two  Tols.,  square  8vo,  uniform  with  the  "  Biography."    Cloth,  gilt  top, 


$6.00. 

CONTAnONQ  : 


Literary  Essays. 
Narratives. 
Commemorative  Discourses. 


Sketches  of  Travel. 

Occasional  Addresses. 

Editorial  Comments  and  Criticisms. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  1,  8,  &  5  Bond  Street 


British  Essayists. 


Alison's  Miscellaneous  Essays,  and  Wilson's  Reerea- 

TIONS  OF  CHRISTOPHER  NORTH.     1  vol.,  8vo.    Cloth,  $2.00  ;  sheep, 
$2.50. 

.     Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays.     By  THOMAS  CAHLYLE.    A  new 
edition,  complete.     1  vol.,  8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00  ;  sheep,  $2.50. 

J  effigy.     Contributions  to  the  "  Edinburgh  Review."    By  FRANCIS  JEFFREY. 
Complete  in  one  vol.,  8vo.    Cloth,  $2.00  ;  sheep,  $2.50. 


.     Essays.     By  Lord  MACAULAT.      1  vol.,  8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00; 
sheep,  $2.60. 

Mackintosh.  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays.  By  Sir  JAMES  MACKIN- 
TOSH. 1  vol.,  8vo.  Cloth,  $2.00;  sheep,  $2.50. 

Modem  British.  Essayists.  A  new  and  complete  edition,  containing 
the  Essays  of  Alison,  Carlyle,  Jeffrey,  Macaulay,  Mackintosh,  Sydney  Smith, 
Talfourd,  Stephen,  and  Wilson.  6  vols.,  8vo.  In  box.  Cloth,  $12.00  ; 
eheep,  $15.00.  Sold  separately,  per  vol.,  $2.00. 

Spectator.  New  edition.  "  The  Spectator,"  new  edition,  carefully  revised, 
On  tinted  paper.  Fine  bold  type.  6  large  vols.,  8vo.  Cloth,  $12.00; 
sheep,  $18.00;  half  calf,  extra,  $25.00;  calf,  $35.00. 

Stephen,  Sir   JameS.     (See  SYDNEY  SMITH.) 

Sydney  Smith,  Talfourd,  and  Stephen.  The  works  of  Rev. 

SYDNEY  SMITH,  and  the  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays  of  T.  NOON  TAL- 
FOURD and  JAMES  STEPHEN.     1  vol.,  8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00  ;  sheep,  $2.50. 

Talfourd,  T.  Noon.    (See  SYDNEY  SMITH.) 

Wilson,  Prof.  John  (Christopher  North).    (See  ALISON'S-) 

Miscellaneous  Essays.) 


For  sale  by  all  booksellers ;  or  any  volume  sent  by  mail,  post-paid,  on  receipt  of  price. 

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